One dead, one hospitalized for carbon monoxide poisoning

One man is in intensive care and a second died Monday inside a condemned house where propane heaters and a generator had been in use.

Authorities say an unconscious Jason Freeman was pulled from a Valley Street home by Poplar Bluff police officer(s) and emergency-medical-services personnel.

Freeman initially was taken by ambulance to Poplar Bluff Regional Medical Center for treatment and later transferred to NEA Baptist Memorial Hospital in Jonesboro, Ark.

Freeman in an intensive care unit, and his condition is not known at this time.

Jeremy Whetstien, 46, was pronounced dead at 421 Valley St. by Butler County Coroner Andy Moore.

Whetstein’s cause of death, Moore said, is carbon monoxide poisoning. No autopsy is planned.

Poplar Bluff firefighters were called to the Valley Street home, owned by Chester Phumphry, at 11:12 a.m. to a report of a gas leak, acting battalion chief Jeff Hale wrote in his report.

En route, Hale said, firefighters were told to “expedite” as one person had been removed from the home and another was still inside.

Upon arrival, Hale said, firefighters donned their self-contained breathing apparatuses and entered the home to search for the second victim.

Whetstien reportedly was found in a back bedroom of the home.

“Inside the building were several propane bottles for heating, two propane heaters and a generator,” Hale said. “All utilities were shut off to the structure.”

Hale said firefighters took air readings and found 150 ppm (parts per million) of carbon monoxide in the house. Ventilation was set up.

Gas company personnel also responded to the home, where they detected “a high level of carbon monoxide in the house,” said Mike Moffitt, interim fire chief.

“Nothing was running” at that time, Moffitt said.

The single-story home, approximately 600 square feet in size, was a condemned structure, said Moffitt.

“It appeared that these two gentlemen were living in the house and working, trying to remodel it,” Moffitt said.

Both Whetstien and Freeman, he said, were found unconscious.

“There was two ladies that were friends of (the men),” Moffitt said. “They had stopped by to see them and found them like that, and they called” authorities.

Moffitt said the women reported to a Poplar Bluff police detective they had last “communicated with the gentleman at midnight the night before. It had been about 11 hours.”