A city utility worker had installed a "limiter" device to restrict the use of electricity at Schur's home on Jan. 13, Belleman said. The device limits power reaching a home and blows out like a fuse if consumption rises past a set level. Power is not restored until the device is reset.
The limiter was tripped sometime between the time of installation and the discovery of Schur's body, Belleman said. He didn't know if anyone had made personal contact with Schur to explain how the device works. Schur's body was discovered by neighbor George Pauwels Jr. "His furnace was not running, the insides of his windows were full of ice the morning we found him," Pauwels told the newspaper.
Belleman said city workers keep the limiter on houses for 10 days, then shut off power entirely if the homeowner hasn't paid utility bills or arranged to do so.
He said Bay City Electric Light & Power's policies will be reviewed, but he didn't believe the city did anything wrong.
"I've said this before and some of my colleagues have said this: Neighbors need to keep an eye on neighbors,"
Belleman said. "When they think there's something wrong, they should contact the appropriate agency or city department." --AP
Robert Belleman, City Electric Light & Power, humanitarian and general heartless asshole. Thanks for the tip there Bob. The dillweeds at the power company made it sound like this deadbeat (now dead-deadbeat) didn't pay his bills and too bad about that maybe his neighbors should have done something.
Maybe his neighbors thought that turning the heat off, in January, on 93 year old people was illegal, like I did. It gets worse, the coroner said that it was a slow painful death.
Marvin E. Schur died "a slow, painful death," said Kanu Virani, Oakland County's deputy chief medical examiner, who performed the autopsy.
"Hypothermia shuts the whole system down, slowly," Virani said. "It's not easy to die from hypothermia without first realizing your fingers and toes feel like they're burning."
Nice.
Yesterday I see the story has been updated. Turns out the late Marvin Schur was a WWII veteran. Oh and when the city said they notified him of the "limiter" they put in. They did, if by notify you mean they put a sticker on his door telling me to pay. Of course he never saw it because he didn't go out of his house, because it was TOO FUCKING COLD and then he died a couple of days later.
A limiter on Schur’s electric meter is being blamed for the man’s death. Now Bay City said it will notify customers before their power is shut off. Michigan’s Attorney General Mike Cox said Tuesday he would review the case. One local lawyer said the question remains: Who is accountable in the war veteran’s death? ... Bay City Electric Light and Power sent Schur a shutoff notice through the mail a few weeks ago.
Then crews placed a shutoff notice on his front door. A few days later, Schur was found by neighbors. Bay City Electric Light and Power, which is owned by the city, said a limiter was placed on Schur’s electrical line. The device limits the power that reaches a home, and it blows out like a fuse if power consumption rises past a set level.
The manager of Bay City said the limiter was tripped sometime between the time of installation and the discovery of the man's body. -- wnem.com news
Somewhere between the time the "limiter" was tripped and the discovery of his body you say? Genius.
This sort of behavior, whether it's a municipality or a corporate entity, like the Airtran airline agent that kicked that muslim family off it's aircraft and called the FBI on them is going to cost these junior Jack Bauer's and their bosses a lot of money in the future. Bay City was lucky in that Schur's wife has already passed away, with no known relatives it will be hard to find a plantiff. Although the city attorney is looking into it. Where does Bay City get off putting these devices on houses with out a verbal notification? devices that fail on purpose, that you have to reset, in the dead of winter! I am surprised they didn't Taser him too.
The Bush administration has really drug all of us back into the 19th century.
