Details surface on body found inside flaming car in Bedford

The identity of the driver found dead inside a burning car in Bedford remains unconfirmed, but new details of the wreck that caused the death are emerging.

The impact of the crash early Wednesday did not cause the driver’s car to burst into flames, Bedford City Police Chief James Day said on Thursday. Rather, the fatal fire sparked from a hot car sitting on dry brush.

Authorities received a 911 call around 12:30 a.m. reporting a fire on Ole Turnpike Drive, at the western edge of the city. When police officers and firefighters with the Bedford Fire Department arrived, they found a car and the brush around it ablaze. The fire left the car a charred shell and burned the body so badly that DNA testing is necessary to identify the victim.

That can take up to three weeks for a positive identification, Day said.

Speed was a factor in the crash, Day said. Investigators are waiting on toxicology results to determine if there were any other contributing factors to the wreck.

For some reason, the driver lost control of the car just past the denture clinic on Ole Turnpike Drive, careening into overgrown brush for about 200 feet before hitting a pile of brush.

The medical examiner’s office determined that there was no blunt-force trauma consistent with the driver being knocked unconscious in the collision, Day said.

As the car sat there, the extreme heat from the catalytic converter sparked a fire in the dry brush under the car, then caught the car on fire, Day said. There is evidence that the driver tried to get out, but for some reason could not.

She died of smoke inhalation, Day said. Investigators don’t know how long the car burned before someone noticed the fire.

Set back over a hill in the overgrown brush, the site of the wreck is down a short narrow road with a smattering of businesses. It cannot be seen from the street.

“The driver could have been injured, but there was no blunt-force trauma and no head injury that could have knocked the driver out,” he said.

Day said it will be a few weeks before officials know if toxicology results can shed any light on why the driver veered off the road and was unable to get out of the car.

A security guard in the area reported the fire after hearing popping and cracking sounds. The man saw the flames and called 911.

Police initially were treating the death as suspicious. The Chevrolet sedan had out-of-state tags, but police on Thursday would not say where the plates are from. Day said the person they believe to have been driver was not a local resident and investigators are unaware of any family in the area.

Investigators took DNA samples from the woman’s home to the medical examiner’s office Thursday morning.

“We have talked to family members of who we think it is, but we are not releasing that until we are absolutely positive,” Day said.

This photo shows the site after the burning car was removed. Photo by Carrie J. Sidener/The News & Advance