Insane house explosion in Indy

[Rob Williams]

This is nuts. In a neighborhood in Indianapolis, an explosion coming from inside one house totally leveled it along with a couple of others. Two people have died, but it's not clear if they were inside the house where the explosion originated.



In some images, you can see that houses on the other side of the street were seriously affected as well. Siding torn right off, garage doors blown inward. Just absolute craziness.

http://www.indystar.com/article/201...resumed-dead-Far-Southside-Indianapolis-blast

 

[marfig]

Wow. Have seen the results of gas explosions before. Just last year one happened near Lisbon. But nothing ever like this. The level of destruction makes me think something else could be afoot.

 

[madmat]

Meth lab perhaps?

 

[Rob Williams]

It's probably a meth lab, because I can't think of anything else that could cause damage like that. It's too concentrated to be a natural gas line explosion or something like that.

Reading some of the accounts of people who live in the area... I just couldn't imagine that happening. One that stands out to me is that a young couple were in bed, and first their windows blew out and all of a sudden their roof started caving in. Madness!

 

[Kougar]

Air burst explosions... always very destructive! If it was a meth lab there would be a ton of evidence scattered all over the basement (if it even had one, can't easily tell) or ground floor, as those places require a large amount of nasty stuff.

I hope they are able to pinpoint what happened though, because such a large-scale explosion would have required not only an extremely large amount of gas, but sufficient oxygen mixture just to properly & fully ignite. I can't see a leaky furnace causing that unless the pipe was like, completely broken off at the heater. Someone would have smelled that much gas building up if it was a slow leak, at least I would think....

 

[Psi*]

Wow. Have seen the results of gas explosions before. Just last year one happened near Lisbon. But nothing ever like this. The level of destruction makes me think something else could be afoot.

Coincidentally, no one was home. The couple that died lived next door. One report I heard yesterday is that a meth lab has been ruled out. At least one expert on home explosions (how specialized is that?) did not feel that a simple nat. gas leak could cause this level of destruction.

Apparently the mother is divorced from dad and daughter's boy friend was living with them == a lot of possible intentional reasons. I'll say it comes down to money, money, or ... money.

 

[Rob Williams]

The entire story is indeed very sketchy. The woman who lived there happened to be at a casino with her new boyfriend at the time, and the daughter was over at a friend's house or something. And, as if that wasn't coincidental enough, the homeowner even boarded their cat for the weekend! Who does that when you're gone just a couple of days?

And then there's the fact that her ex-husband has a restraining order on him, they've declared a massive bankruptcy and then, the ex-husband just comes out of nowhere assuming it's the furnace.

Sketch, indeed.

 

[Rob Williams]

Well, here's a follow-up.

http://www.cnn.com/2012/12/21/justice/indiana-home-explosion/index.html

http://www.indystar.com/article/20121221/NEWS/121221007/Prosecutors-Explosion-set-collect-insurance

Insurance fraud.

 

[marfig]

"In addition to two counts of felony murder, the accused are charged with conspiracy to commit arson, 12 counts of arson as a Class A felony and 33 counts of arson as a Class B felony. Mark Leonard and Shirley were also charged with conspiracy to commit arson as a Class B felony. They are being held at the Marion County Jail without bail, and an initial court hearing is scheduled for Monday morning."

Won't lose my sleep thinking these three in jail.

Here you are leading what you expect to be a decent and honest life. Then someone next door gets you killed because they wanted to defraud an insurance company. Two lives lost in the most stupid way because of these losers.

 

[Rob Williams]

I couldn't agree more, Mario. It's depressing.

Given how much these three have lied since the incident, I think it's safe to say that they really don't feel too guilty about taking innocent lives like they did.

 

[Kougar]

Glad they were able to resolve this, things were just way too suspicious to begin with. I hope those people never get parole.

Reading the article, I am very curious how they could tell what kind of microwave it was given the extent of the explosion. While that may have been a fluke, I really am curious to know how they could tell the thermostat had been changed at all....

 

[Rob Williams]

Glad they were able to resolve this, things were just way too suspicious to begin with. I hope those people never get parole.

Reading the article, I am very curious how they could tell what kind of microwave it was given the extent of the explosion. While that may have been a fluke, I really am curious to know how they could tell the thermostat had been changed at all....

I'm always curious about that myself. It's crazy.