Farmington police continue to try to identify the body found in a car that was driven into a natural-gas line that exploded and burned for hours two weeks ago, police spokesman Sgt. Mike Wilbanks said.
The Washington County fire marshal, coroner and the Police Department are working together, Wilbanks said. Bones have been sent to the state Crime Laboratory in Little Rock, but no results have been released, he said.
A car hit the natural gas line about 3:45 p.m. Dec. 16 near Main Street and Double Springs Road in Farmington, causing an intense fire that burned for about nine hours. Firefighters from multiple jurisdictions fought the blaze, which destroyed a duplex and caused a power failure.
The car that drove into the natural-gas pipe was destroyed, police said. Wilbanks said the fire was "like a blowtorch."
Police could not find a vehicle identification number, which might have helped identify the vehicle's owner and possibly the driver, Wilbanks said. Numbers should have been stamped on the car in several places, but the car was too badly burned to read them, he said.
The severity of the fire could hamper identifying the person, said Kermit Channell, executive director of the state Crime Lab.
Samples from severely burned bodies can take time to analyze, because the state sends the samples to a university in Texas for mitochondrial DNA tests, Channell said.
"Every case is going to be different," Channell said. "The more a body is subject to intense heat, as apparently this one was, the more difficult it becomes [to identify the person]."
The body found inside the car was in such poor condition that samples may not yield any DNA evidence, said Tyler McCartney, assistant fire marshal. Getting any information back could take a while, he said.
Wilbanks said he could not say whether a missing-persons case is connected with the fatal fire. Farmington police are working with the Washington County sheriff's office on the case, he said.
McCartney said investigators have a good idea who the driver was, but the information cannot be released until they are completely certain about the identity, he said.
Metro on 12/30/2016