A dry Christmas tree likely fueled a raging fire that destroyed a 16,000-square-foot Annapolis, Maryland, mansion, killing four children and their grandparents, a law enforcement official said Wednesday.
Technology executive Don Pyle, his wife, Sandra, and four grandchildren died of smoke inhalation in the January 19 fire, the official said.
Five bodies were recovered in the days after the fire; the final one on Monday.
The grandchildren were identified as Alexis (Lexi) Boone, 8; Kaitlyn (Katie) Boone, 7; Charlotte Boone, 8; and Wesley (Wes) Boone, 6. They are the children of Sandra Pyle’s sons, Randy and Clint Boone, according to a statement from their families.
“We are relieved that our loved ones have all been recovered,” the Boone and Pyle families said in a statement released Tuesday. “We thank the men, women and canine service animals who have worked so tirelessly to bring them home to us. Though we are grieving deeply, this has brought us some small sense of closure. We take comfort in that they are now together, and we can begin to mend our hearts.”
The children were visiting their grandparents for a sleepover because January 19 was a school holiday, a family spokeswoman said.
The statement confirmed the identities of the six people firefighters and others had been searching for in the ruins of the waterfront home.
“Our love for our family is boundless,” the statement said. “Our loss demands time and quiet reflection to process these feelings. We ask that you respect our need for privacy. Life is fragile. Make time today to embrace your loved ones.”
“We are so grateful for the outpouring of support from the community,” the statement said. “The kindness shown by friends and strangers alike has been overwhelming.
Local and federal officials last week secured the structure and accessed the foundation of the 16,000-square-foot house. Cadaver dogs led them to the bodies, officials said.
Authorities were initially treating the house as a crime scene. Officials said it is standard procedure for a case such as this and no evidence has been found to indicate suspicious activity.
The house belonged to Pyle, chief operating officer for ScienceLogic, and his wife, Sandra, company spokesman Antonio Piraino said.
The sheer size of the structure and the fact that three-fourths of the building had collapsed into the basement, with deep piles of debris still smoldering days after the blaze, compounded the search, Anne Arundel County Fire Capt. Robert Howarth said. He led the investigation along with a team from the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives.
“You’re looking at five standard houses put together,” he said last week. “This is more of a commercial fire than it is a residential fire. There are a lot of businesses that aren’t 16,000 square feet. That adds to it.”
Fire officials said they were alerted to the fire about 3:30 a.m. January 18. About 80 firefighters responded.
The ATF national response team responded because the fire was deemed suspicious, Howarth said.
The fire department said crews had difficulty putting out the fire because the house is secluded, apparently with no fire hydrants on the scene.
Photos the fire department posted on Twitter showed hoses stretched for long distances. Davies said it took hours for fire department tanker trucks and a fire boat on an adjacent creek to bring the fire under control.
Pyle’s company biography described him as an industry veteran who has held multiple CEO positions, with more than 25 years’ experience in information technology infrastructure software and hardware management.
Pyle told The Washington Post last year that after holding positions in a family business, he decided to look for an “industry that was in its infancy and something that would have growth potential.” He started in a sales position in a firm that connected computers over transmission lines, and later sold both hardware and software components for the Internet.
Pyle told the newspaper he eventually moved from sales to sales management to general management positions. In 1992, the company went public and was sold to Cisco Systems five years later for $4.2 billion, according to the Post.