He apparently lived alone. On the streets. In and out of rehab programs for people with drug or alcohol problems.
And now he's dead. The man died in a house fire inside a long-abandoned Sycamore Street house.
While authorities still are trying to confirm the name of the man killed in Friday night's fatal blaze, they believe they may know who he was.
And now they're trying to determine whether he was a squatter, and if so, how long he had been staying inside the house at 1364 Sycamore, about a dozen blocks east of Fillmore Avenue.
People in the neighborhood said they believe the man had been a former resident, early this year, of a transitional housing program at nearby St. Luke's Mission of Mercy. But he hadn't lived there for months and hadn't been seen there until recently.
That man was seen at a St. Luke's food giveaway earlier Friday, when witnesses observed that he apparently had been drinking earlier in the day.
"I saw him say hello to some people," said a man who knew the possible victim. "That's the last I saw of him."
Officials at St. Luke's declined to comment.
While many questions still remain about Friday night's fatal fire, authorities and neighbors agreed on one point Saturday, that the house has been vacant for a long time.
"No gas, no electricity, no nothing. It was all shut off," said Daniel Golimowski, day manager at the Happy Swallow Restaurant across the street. "[The fire victim] had to be a squatter."
Besides having no utilities, the house had broken panes of glass and busted doors, long before Friday night's fire.
"It's been abandoned forever," added a restaurant customer, who wouldn't give her name. "I've been here for five years, and I've never noticed anyone living there."
The man killed in the fire died from smoke inhalation, authorities said. The body of a dog also was brought out of the burned-out house, but authorities don't believe the animal was killed in the fire.
"It appears that the dog had been there for some time," Buffalo Fire Commissioner Garnell W. Whitfield Jr. said Saturday. Others speculated that the dog could have been dead for weeks, months or even longer.
Fire crews were called to the burning house after off-duty Fire Lt. Kevin Harris spotted the fire and called it in shortly after 8 p. m.
"He attempted to gain entry to the building but was not able to do so because of the smoke and heat," Whitfield said.
Harris, though, did spot a man in the upstairs window.
Whitfield said, "We want to know why the man was there, whether he was living there ... and how the fire started."
The blaze left an estimated $32,000 damage and sent one firefighter to the hospital for evaluation.
Fires in abandoned houses in that part of the city are not uncommon, Whitfield said.
"That district has fallen victim to several fires of late," he added. "Our guys have that area under surveillance."
The burned-out house sits next to four vacant lots on Sycamore.
"It's sad, but what can I tell you," said Golimowski, from the Happy Swallow Restaurant. "Years ago, when these houses were abandoned [but still standing], people just sat on the porches, drinking and smoking. Now that these houses have been torn down, you don't have all this riffraff hanging around on the corners.
"It's safer now."
McClatchy-Tribune News Service
