Firefighters found a body at a home where they were putting out a “suspicious” fire early Wednesday morning in Eugene’s Fairmount neighborhood, authorities said.

The fire in the 2000 block of Elk Avenue was reported at 12:32 a.m., according to a dispatch log.

Police have not identified the victim, or said what might have caused the blaze.

Lane County records list the owner of the fire-damaged property as George Wasson. Neighbors said Wasson, a Coquille Indian Tribe elder, has lived alone at the house for years.

Several violent crimes detectives and forensic technicians from the Eugene Police Department worked the scene for much of Wednesday.

Detectives strung yellow police tape across the street, while neighbors milled about and spoke among themselves about the fire and the man who owns the now-charred home.

One neighbor, Svevo Brooks, said that he awoke early Wednesday morning to the sound of a vehicle traveling down Elk Avenue.

Approximately five minutes later, Brooks said he heard an “explosion” at Wasson’s home, saw the fire and called 911.

“I came outside and started yelling for him,” Brooks said of Wasson.

“I couldn’t get near the house. It was ablaze.”

Four fire engines responded to the home. Firefighters extinguished the flames and turned over the investigation to police.

Wasson’s is one of about a dozen homes that sit along Elk Avenue, a dead end road off Fairmount Boulevard that winds along a hill just south of Hendricks Park.

Brooks said he and Wasson, 79, worked together to clear their street of tree branches that had crashed to the ground during an ice storm in early February.

Brooks said he heard Wasson, in his capacity as a Native American tribal leader, give a reading last week at the Many Nations Longhouse on the University of Oregon campus.

Brooks called Wasson “a wonderful man. Soft-spoken and eloquent.”

The longhouse’s steward, Gordon Bettles, said Wasson long has been “considered one of the better storytellers among the Native American population.”

Wasson helped form the university’s Native American Student Union and previously worked as an anthropology professor at the UO, Bettles said.

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