ST. MARYS — Questions remain after a St. Marys building collapsed on two workers Thursday, killing one of them. Now, one county is looking into whether the men should have been working on the building and whether there were proper permits.
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As News Center 7 previously reported, a building collapsed onto two workers on Spring Street Thursday morning.
One of the two workers, Christopher Brown, was found dead in the rubble.
>> PHOTOS: Building partially collapses in St. Marys
Our I-Team investigation led us to Miami County on Friday. That’s because the City of St. Marys, where a building collapse killed Brown on Thursday, contracts with the Miami County Department of Development for certain services.
“They contract with us for all commercial building inspections,” Miami County Department of Development Interim Co-Director Rob England confirmed to the I-Team Friday. “So building, and electrical, mechanical. Everything except plumbing, actually.”
England told the I-Team he does not recall being called to the building in St. Marys or doing any permit inspections there. He added the agency will “definitely” be opening an investigation.
“We’ll follow up on it,” England said. “I’ll investigate to find out if they should have gotten repairs or if they did repairs without permits, which is against the law itself.”
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When the I-Team went to the St. Marys Fire Department on Friday, the chief further confirmed what we reported on Thursday. Someone with direct knowledge of the building’s condition told the I-Team that they expressed safety concerns about the building to its owner and the city’s fire department. They also asked for an inspection.
Fire Chief Dough Ayers confirmed to the I-Team he did that fire inspection in October and during it, noticed and documented structural concerns.
“And we had talked to the building owner about that, and he was supposed to be taking care of it,” Ayers said.
Friday at the firehouse, the chief told me when they transferred to a new records management system, they lost some property information from 2024, including the inspection records from that building.
Ayers said they’re working to recover the records through possible backups.
St. Marys police told the I-Team they are not involved in the investigation. The overarching investigation into Brown’s death is federal and being handled by the Occupational Safety and Health Administration (OSHA).
The St. Marys Fire Department said on Friday that they’ve provided information to federal investigators as part of that probe.
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