Body discovered inside house after fire in Surrey

An investigation is underway in Surrey after a man’s body was discovered following a house fire.

Police are treating the man’s death as suspicious, and the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team has taken over the case.

“The cause of the man’s death has not been determined; however, it is being considered suspicious at this time,” said Staff Sgt. Lindsey Houghton of the Surrey Police Service in an update Monday afternoon.

The incident began shortly after 4 p.m. Sunday in what police call an abandoned house in the 9800 block 138th Street.

Cell phone video taken by a neighbour showed smoke coming out of the back of a duplex. Police say firefighters found the man’s body while they were working to control the blaze.

“Any time we find a body, whether it's a fire or not, if we can't determine what the cause of death may have been, and often that's done in collaboration or in conjunction with insights from the coroner service or other investigative services, we automatically deem it suspicious until we're able to clarify or rule that out,” Houghton told CTV News Monday morning.

A neighbour told CTV News a family moved out of the unit where the fire started about a month ago, but he wouldn’t be surprised if there were homeless people living there.

“There was no one else inside. It was just the one individual who was found deceased. It's our understanding from talking to neighbors that it is abandoned, that every once in a while there'll be what's been described as transient people coming and going from there,” said Houghton.

No information about the man’s identity has been released.

“My understanding is that he's not been identified yet. We don't know what his homelessness status might be. Those are some things that our investigators will absolutely be looking to try and determine as soon as possible,” said Houghton.

Anyone with information is asked to call IHIT at 1-877-551-4448 or email [e-mail].