MD Man Finds Brother's Dead Body in Warehouse Hours After Firefighters Leave

The family of a man whose body was found 10 hours after a warehouse fire in Southwest Baltimore is asking for answers.

According to WJZ News, when the brother of James Craig, Jr. heard that the warehouse where he worked was involved in a fire, he called his Craig.

When Craig didn't respond, his brother went to the warehouse and began to look around.

Within minutes, he claims he found Craig's body at the top of the stairs.

Now, the family is asking Baltimore City officials why firefighters didn't find Craig.

"I don't know how dark it was, but if they would have peaked up there, they'd have seen his body," the brother said. "I would like to know what prevented them from going in there."

Craig's father, James Craig Sr., said that if firefighters would have found him at the time of the fire, he could still be alive.

"My son was upstairs," Craig Sr. told WJZ. "He could've been unconscious at the time. They could have resuscitated him, you know what I mean? And, he'd be alive right now."  

According to 9-1-1 dispatch calls, firefighters were ordered to evacuate the building when conditions worsened.

The fire was put out around 1 a.m., and Craig's body was found 10 hours later.

"I feel like they didn't do their job that night," a neighbor said. "They didn't do the walkthrough. They didn't do what they were supposed to do."

The fire comes on the heels of Baltimore City's fire chief, Niles Ford, resigning Friday after a report detailed what went wrong in a January fire that killed three firefighters.

Among the issues addressed in the report were the department's policies on emergency operations in vacant buildings.

The building on West Lexington was not vacant, but fire officials told WJZ this weekend they believed it was, at first.