Prosecutor: Man involved in car explosion has died

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The man who was inside a PT Cruiser when it exploded in the parking lot of the Green Valley Motor Lodge last Friday has died, according to the Brown County prosecutor’s office.

The prosecutor’s office had been considering criminal charges against the man, age 48, from Indianapolis.

Since he was not charged, was not booked into jail and has since died, the Brown County Democrat is choosing to not use his name.

The night of the explosion, the man had left a suicide note in his room at the Green Valley Motor Lodge apologizing for the mess, and directions to a more extensive note on his laptop computer, Prosecutor Ted Adams said in a press release issued this morning.

The man died in Indianapolis on March 21, Adams said. The Marion County coroner’s office confirmed his cause of death as apparent suicide by hanging.

The explosion happened at about 10 p.m. Friday, March 16 at a motel on State Road 46 West, about a mile from downtown Nashville.

The man was sitting in the silver PT Cruiser and was lighting a cigarette when a propane tank in the back of the car exploded, Adams said.

The explosion appeared to be intentional, he said.

With the roof of the car distended, all the windows gone and the doors twisted, the man drove the car out of the Green Valley Motor Lodge parking lot and headed west on State Road 46. Officers stopped him about a mile up the road at the west entrance to Brown County State Park.

Officers found the man uninjured.

They began an investigation into drunken driving, Adams said.

Later that evening, the man was transported to the Columbus Regional Hospital Stress Center.

The blast also damaged a pickup truck in the Green Valley Motor Lodge parking lot and broke two windows of the motel. No one at the motel was injured.

In the 1990s, the man had been charged with 19 felony counts of child molesting in Marion County, according to online court records. He was convicted of six of those counts. He was released to probation in 2009, the court record said.

With the man’s death, “this matter will be considered closed by law enforcement and the Brown County Prosecutor’s Office,” Adams said in the press release.

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