February 12, 2016
By Paul Joseph, Paragon Communications News Director –
A mysterious fire behind locked gates at a Clinton salvage yard remains under investigation.
According to a Clinton fire fighter, the department’s investigators are still at a loss in determining how nine vehicles were destroyed or damaged at the Parker Wrecker Service parking lot.
Fire officials says that they received the call about 3:23 Wednesday morning from a patrolman who spotted the blaze at the lot in the 2400 block of South 13th Street.
The owner of the company, Jimmy Parker told the Clinton Daily News that most of the cars were scrap but a couple belonged to customers. Fortunately, those weren’t destroyed.
Clinton Fire Lt. Brett Russell said today that the gate to the lot was still locked when firefighters arrived and that they had to cut the lock to get inside. Investigators believed that the review of video from a security camera would shed light on the origin of the fire, but the cause of the fire is still being investigated, Russell said.
The lot where the fire occurred is near the Custer County Fairgrounds, north of Commerce Road.
Firefighters were back in the firehouse after extinguishing the fire at 5:37, Wednesday morning.
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