A man was found dead in a living room chair of a Great Mills apartment late Wednesday night, authorities report, after neighbors saw smoke, heard an explosion and called volunteer firefighters who forced their way into the home filled with smoke.
An autopsy was under way Thursday to confirm the identity of the man whose body was recovered from the Fox Chase Village residence, but the people who lived closest to David Van Ryswick spoke of a friendly man who enjoyed their company, and the birds and squirrels that he fed from his ground floor patio.
They also said he was on oxygen and was a smoker, a combination that concerned them.
Deputy state fire marshals report that investigators found evidence of smoking materials and a home medical oxygen unit inside the apartment.
More than 40 Bay District, 2nd District and Hollywood volunteer firefighters responded to a 11:37 p.m. alarm Wednesday, the fire marshal’s office reports. Despite the heavy smoke they encountered, the bulk of the fire had burned itself out when they went inside.
Tricillia Schmidt said she heard a smoke alarm before she ran out of her adjacent apartment and began banging on Van Ryswick’s door.
“I saw the smoke wisping out,” Schmidt said, and she went outside to his glass patio door. “I was banging on the patio [door], trying to get it to open. That’s when the oxygen blew up. When I heard the boom, it literally blew me back. The windows got black, and you could hear little pings against the glass.”
An upstairs neighbor, Annie McCarty, said, “He was always sitting out here, smoking with his oxygen. That’s what everybody was always afraid of.”
Kaitlyn Schmidt said Van Ryswick usually would leave the oxygen tank inside his home when he was outside smoking, and that he sometimes would take off his oxygen tube.
Van Ryswick would sit outside regardless of the weather, his neighbors said, and he was friendly with both the people who passed by and the small animals that would gather outside his home. “He would throw bread out here for the birds and squirrels, and nuts. He would sit out here and watch them,” McCarty said.
Red Cross volunteers report that they provided emergency shelter Wednesday night for two residents of the building.
jwharton@somdnews.com
