Lahaina Fire Death Toll Rises To 101 After Police Identify Remains Of Missing Person
Maui officers are continuing to search for the two people left on their “credible missing persons list” from the Aug. 8 fires.
The death toll of the Aug. 8 fires on Maui rose to 101 on Friday when the Maui Police Department鈥檚 newly created cold case unit located the remains of 76-year-old Paul Kasprzycki, officials announced in a news release Tuesday.
He was one of three people remaining on the department鈥檚 which in late August included 388 people. Now there are only two people left: Robert H. Owens and Elmer Lee Stevens.
Kasprzycki was an artist who lived in the Lahaina industrial area where he had a studio and workshop, according to a by a friend.
His remains were located within the industrial area off of Limahana Place, according to MPD.
It is the first time MPD has had a dedicated cold case unit, which includes two officers who served on the Morgue Identification Notification Task Force that painstakingly identified all 100 previously known remains from the wildfire.
During a Feb. 5 press conference to release its preliminary after-action report, MPD Officer Brad Taylor said the creation of the cold case unit shows the families of those still missing that 鈥渨e have not forgotten you and we are actively working for you.鈥
The investigations for the remaining missing persons has included pursuing any new leads and searching for eyewitness accounts of where they might have been during the fire.
鈥淲e looked at a map and with what we knew about their mobility, we created strategies of where they might have escaped to, and then we sent anthropological teams to go to those estimated escape routes,鈥 Taylor said. 鈥淭he search is not over.鈥
On Tuesday, MPD said in a news release that it continues to investigate the remaining cases and 鈥渄iligently reinvestigate all available evidence.鈥
It has been an arduous process to find the remains of the fire victims, with more than 40 cadaver dogs meticulously searching through the ash and rubble of the five-mile burn area. Forensic experts spent months working to identify those remains, most badly burned, through DNA, dental records and other methods.
The Lahaina blaze is the deadliest wildfire in the United States in more than a century. While officials had put the death toll as high as 115, DNA testing found that some of the remains were fragmented or commingled and on Sept. 15 the number was revised to 97.
The death toll later rose to 100 with two people identified as dying later from their fire-related injuries and the discovery of an additional person鈥檚 remains on Oct. 12.
Civil Beat鈥檚 coverage of Maui County is supported in part by a grant from the Nuestro Futuro Foundation.
