Coroner: 65-year-old man dead after fatal house fire

The fire happened on 363 Lincoln Avenue in the Pleasant Hill neighborhood overnight.

MACON, Georgia (41NBC/WMGT)-  A 65-year-old man is dead after a fatal house fire in Macon, according to Bibb County Coroner Leon Jones.

The fire happened on 363 Lincoln Avenue in the Pleasant Hill neighborhood overnight.

Coroner Ronnie Miley pronounced Bernard Taylor dead on the scene at 12:07 am.

Chief Shane Edwards says the fire is ruled as accidental. Edwards says a space heater or electrical fan was thought to be the cause of the fire, but has yet to be confirmed.

We spoke with Sulatha Blount one of Taylor’s neighbors about that night.

“Last night, I was laying in my bed and my neighbor called me and said that she smelled a strong odor of smoke and she asked me, did I smell it? I told her no, but as soon as I stood up out of my bed, the smoke was so strong, I started looking to see if my house was on fire.

When I didn’t see no fire, I came out on the porch and me and her starting sniffing around, trying to find out where the smell of fire was coming from, and I turned and looked back at my neighbor’s window, and when I looked up at the attic the whole room was red and I ran in my house and got a crowbar and we tried to tear the door down, but we couldn’t make entrance.

At that time we had already called 911 and we weren’t definitely sure at that time if he was home or not, but when the firemen went in there and he came back out, we asked him, was he in there? He stated that he couldn’t tell us he was waiting on his daughter and when his daughter came, he said that he was in there and they found him deceased.

That was my best friend the first person I met when I moved into this neighborhood. You know, he always looked out for me, because I live alone and he never could pronounce my name, so he would just call me neighbor. So, I’m definitely going to miss him and it is very hard scene to have to look at,” said Blount.