One Dead After Car Fire In Wilkinsburg

WILKINSBURG (KDKA) -- A man died early Sunday morning following a car fire in Wilkinsburg.

The victim has been identified as 41-year-old Jerry Burgwin of McKeesport. The cause of death was determined to be blunt trauma to the head, neck and trunk.

The crash that happened in the middle of the night, around 1 a.m., would wake many in the 2400-block of Laketon Road in Wilkinsburg. Scorched pavement and a fire-damaged tree show just where the accident occurred.

A woman who lives across the street from where the crash happened, says it's hard to forget the images of the car bursting into flames.

"He didn't try to stop, he just impacted into the tree," said witness Gencie Smith. "It was awful. It was awful."

Smith lives directly across from where county homicide detectives say a heavily-damaged vehicle came to a rest before bursting into flames.

"It was inferno-type," Smith said. "It was white flames, yellow flames, red flames. It was all of it confined inside of the car."

Smith told KDKA-TV's Ross Guidotti that seconds later, an individual desperately ran up the street, trying to rescue Burgwin.

"He was beating the window with something, trying to get the window open to get the person out of the car," she said. "And all of a sudden there's this blaze, and he had to get away from it. And you could see a body through the fire, and it was... It was chilling. It was really chilling."

With the flames out and the victim's body removed, it was then that investigators would discover multiple bullets struck the car at some point.

A report of shots fired in the 1700-block of Laketon came in moments before the crash occurred.

Allegheny County homicide detectives continue their investigation.

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