Andrew
06-25-2008, 04:02 PM
1 of 4 dead in SoCal house was NASA employee
BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
9:02 p.m. June 24, 2008
LANCASTER – A NASA engineer was identified Tuesday as one of four people found dead after a suspicious fire in an Antelope Valley house.
Joseph Paul Ciganek, 60, lived in the Quartz Hill home that burned Monday, said Los Angeles County coroner's spokesman Ed Winter.
Ciganek worked at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center as a management systems analyst specializing in electronic test systems, said NASA spokesman Alan Brown. Dryden is located on Edwards Air Force Base.
Sheriff's homicide detectives are investigating the deaths.
Firefighters found Ciganek's body in a different room from those of a woman, a boy who was about 10 years old and a girl who was about 13, Winter said.
Ciganek's body showed some kind of trauma, while the other bodies were badly burned, he said.
The woman and the two children were related to each other but had a different last name from Ciganek.
Investigators withheld their names pending notification of the woman's next of kin who was out of the country, said Winters.
Quartz Hill is an unincorporated area near Lancaster in the Mojave Desert north of Los Angeles.
BY ASSOCIATED PRESS
9:02 p.m. June 24, 2008
LANCASTER – A NASA engineer was identified Tuesday as one of four people found dead after a suspicious fire in an Antelope Valley house.
Joseph Paul Ciganek, 60, lived in the Quartz Hill home that burned Monday, said Los Angeles County coroner's spokesman Ed Winter.
Ciganek worked at NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center as a management systems analyst specializing in electronic test systems, said NASA spokesman Alan Brown. Dryden is located on Edwards Air Force Base.
Sheriff's homicide detectives are investigating the deaths.
Firefighters found Ciganek's body in a different room from those of a woman, a boy who was about 10 years old and a girl who was about 13, Winter said.
Ciganek's body showed some kind of trauma, while the other bodies were badly burned, he said.
The woman and the two children were related to each other but had a different last name from Ciganek.
Investigators withheld their names pending notification of the woman's next of kin who was out of the country, said Winters.
Quartz Hill is an unincorporated area near Lancaster in the Mojave Desert north of Los Angeles.