The body of the woman that got killed when the portable toilet she was on exploded in St John’s County last Saturday has been positively identified.
According to First Coast News, 62-year-old Denise Victoria McQuaig of St. Augustine was using the portable toilet on Sept. 28 at about 6:30 a.m. when it exploded, killing her instantly.
The blast was so powerful that investigators had a hard time identifying the charred body. They could only testify that it was probably a white female, according to Jacksonville.com. The porta-potty burned to the ground.
McQuaig lived down the road from a house currently under construction at the 500 block of North Horseshoe Road in St. Augustine, Crime Online reported.
According to the outlet, the property owner said no work was being done at the site on that particular day, and no other casualties have been reported so far.
Although identification of the body is completed by the Medical Examiner’s Office, the question remains what exactly caused the accident. At this stage, however, after interviewing several neighbors, Police are not expecting any foul play.
“We have evidence, but we do not have an official cause of death yet,” St. Johns Sheriff’s Office spokesman Chuck Mulligan said, according to Ocala StarBanner. “We have a pretty good idea of what we think happened, but we have not released that yet.”
In a statement on Sept. 28, the St. Johns County Sheriff’s Office said officials responded to a home on North Horseshoe Road in St. Augustine after a report of a fire inside a portable toilet.
“Regarding today’s discovery of human remains contained within a portable toilet, detectives believe the decedent is a white female,” the sheriff’s office said.
A loud explosion was heard at around 7 a.m., witnesses told WFOX.
Investigators had to don hazmat suits as they investigated the area, sifting through dirt near a construction site for hours.
According to the Florida Times-Union, the portable toilet was located at a property undergoing construction for months.
“A person could have gone in there, and the methane gas could have ignited somehow … it might have been a suicide or something more nefarious. We just don’t know at this juncture,” Mulligan said.
“In my 32 years in law enforcement, I’ve never seen one of these before,” Mulligan noted.
Epoch Times reporter Jack Phillips contributed to this report
