Jefferson St. Neighbor First Spotted the Unconscious Woodbridge Fireman in the Fire Truck

"There's a fire."

Those were the words Krista Sweeney heard when her daughter called to tell her that 33 Jefferson Street, the house right across the road from their home, was .

Sweeney was worried about the safety of her kids at her home, located in the Menlo Park Terrace section of , so she dashed out of work and headed home.

She parked her car a distance away, and saw firefighters scurrying to and fro, aiming fire hoses at the thick black clouds of smoke that obliterated the house from view.

That was when Sweeney passed one of the fire engines that, she thought, for a moment had a mannequin in the driver's seat.

"That's strange. It's not real. The color is so odd," she thought for a moment.

It was Bruce Turcotte, lifelong volunteer firefighter, former chief for the Hopelawn Fire Company, lifeless, slumped over the wheel of the fire engine he had driven out as a first responder to battle the Jefferson Street fire.

Sweeney blinked for a moment. 

Hidden by the ambulance

"I almost wanted to touch him to see if he was real," she said, but in a second that thought fled as she worked her way to some of the firemen whose sole attention was on battling the blaze in front of them.

Sweeney pointed to the engine, hidden behind an ambulance whose EMS workers were treating some firefighters overcome by the smoke.

She pointed to the fire engine behind the ambulance. "There's a man in there. He looks unconscious," she said.

The firemen looked at one another and in seconds, they had located Turcotte, dragged his body from the cab of the fire engine, and were furiously working to revive him.

Sweeney stepped back and watched in horror.

"They didn't know [that he was injured.] You couldn't see him from where they were fighting the fire. The ambulance blocked it. You had to be where I was," she said, as she was walking towards her house to see Turcotte's unconscious body in the fire truck.

Turcotte, 58, was part of the rapid intervention crew assigned to get equipment ready to fight the fire. He drove the Hopelawn truck to the fire, and when he was last seen, he was helping to stretch fire hoses from the pumper for engine company crews to work their way into the building. Turcotte was taken down the street to John F. Kennedy Medical Center in Edison, where he was pronounced dead.

The former fire chief wasn't the only victim of the Jefferson Street fire, which is being investigated by the Arson Unit of the Middlesex County Prosecutor's Office. 

Firefighters found the body of a man in the basement of the house. Woodbridge spokesman John Hagerty said that the fatality was of someone who "resided in the house."

"That's another sad story," Sweeney said.

The man in the basement

The man who lived in the house was Robert B. Ness - but he wasn't supposed to be living there, Sweeney said.

"The house was in foreclosure," she said, recalling how Ness's girlfriend had moved out in November, when the foreclosure was proceeding.

Sweeney, who has lived in her own home 18 years, knew Barbara Ness-Kerrigan, the former owner of 33 Jefferson Street. "She was a wonderful woman," Sweeney said, who had been friends with the woman as long as she lived in the neighborhood.

Ness-Kerrigan was an assistant vice president at an Old Bridge bank, but she insisted on living at the Jefferson Street house because it was her family home.

"She grew up there," Sweeney said.

Ness-Kerrigan lived with her boyfriend, who "took great care of the house. It was immaculate," she said.

In 2007, Ness-Kerrigan passed away from cancer, and that was when the house went to seed. She died without a will, the story went, and her longtime boyfriend was evicted from the house. 

The property went to Robert Ness, as his sister's closest living relative. 

Ness and his girlfriend "kept to themselves," Sweeney said. She rarely saw them, but when she did, they both entered the house through the front door.

"The house became an eyesore," she said. "There was trash all over the place, no one mowed the lawn. It was a mess."

Couldn't afford the taxes

The girlfriend told Sweeney that she couldn't afford to stay in the house because "she couldn't afford the property taxes." In November, the girlfriend moved out of the house around the same time that Ness told Sweeney he had been served with foreclosure and eviction papers.

She saw a group of men in front of the house, and she assumed that they had something to do with the foreclosure. At any rate, Sweeney thought Ness was gone for good.

"We didn't think anyone lived there anymore," she said, until she saw Ness walking in the neighborhood, and noticed a light on in the house.

Sweeney's 14-year-old son, Kevin, saw Ness go into the house, but by the rear door. 

"He never did that, but I guess if they changed the locks on the front of the house, they didn't change them in the back," she said.

Ness and his girlfriend kept at least a half dozen cats which apparently were left behind. "They all died in the fire," she said.

"I think he was coming back to feed the cats, but maybe he moved back in. He was sentimental. He didn't want to give up his childhood home," Sweeney said, relating what Ness had told her.

It was ironic, she added. Ness-Kerrigan had told her that another brother, long ago when they were children, had died in the house.

"In a fire," Sweeney said. "Maybe no one remembers that anymore, but it was just strange and sad that one brother died in the house so long ago. 

"And now this," she said.