Arson blamed in car fire
By OREN DORELL, Staff Writer
RALEIGH - Police blamed arson for a car explosion Tuesday that forced the evacuation of several hundred workers from a North Raleigh office complex.
Mark D. Fisher, 46, of Stedman was in fair condition at WakeMed's Intensive Care Unit. He apparently jumped from the second level of the parking deck to the ground outside, said Lt. Chris Morgan of the Raleigh police department.
Morgan said police are investigating whether a domestic dispute played a role in the incident at The Forum office complex on the 8500 block of Six Forks Road. Fisher had been romantically involved with a female employee at the complex who owned the car, which exploded in a blaze of fire at about 12:46 p.m.
"It appears there were some problems" with the relationship, Morgan said. No charges had been filed as of late Tuesday.
About 50 officers responded to the explosion, cordoning off the office complex and evacuating several hundred workers from all four buildings, police said.
Investigators with the federal Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms and members of the Six Forks Fire Department also responded to the scene.
Bruce Hall of Raleigh, an employee at the advertising company Howard Merrell & Partners Inc., said he was walking out of the office cafeteria after lunch when he saw a commotion. There was smoke coming out of the second level of the parking deck, he said, and "I saw someone lying on the ground with what looked like four firefighters standing around him."
Late in the day, police and firefighters swarmed around the charred car, a late model burgundy Dodge Intrepid with temporary tags. Its doors were shut but bent out at the window frames, and glass littered the concrete deck around it. It appeared that the damage was caused by a tremendous force that emanated from inside the car. Cars parked two spaces away on both sides were damaged by the heat. The sharp smell of burnt plastic hung in the air.
Morgan said the fire was set, although he didn't explain how.
"We know there was an explosion from witness accounts," he said. "The car subsequently erupted with fire."
Fisher was running from the car and vaulted over a short wall, encountering a two-story drop into a deep ditch that was part of the parking deck, Morgan said.
The car's owner works for Misys Inc., a developer of medical software and one of the major tenants of the office complex, Morgan said.
Several Misys employees told The News & Observer that the injured man was a former boyfriend of the woman.
A young man who answered the phone at Fisher's Cumberland County home and said he was Fisher's son said he was "not really sure what's going on" or why his father was in Raleigh. Fisher does not work at The Forum.
The Raleigh police bomb squad also investigated two bags found on the grass near where Fisher landed but found them to be innocuous, said Raleigh Police Capt. Don Weingarten. An officer with a bomb-sniffing dog searched between 500 and 1000 cars, finding no devices, before workers were allowed to re-enter the parking deck and retrieve their cars.