Council Bluffs police say the death of a homeless man this month was an accident. It was a dry and windy day when firefighters called to an industrial area near railroad tracks and less than a mile from the casino in Council Bluffs found a man badly burned in a homeless encampment.
He died at an Omaha hospital and investigators talked with others in the area and tested his clothing for flammable chemicals that would have indicated someone deliberately set the fatal fire.
Now they say 35-year-old Bradley Raymond was not the victim of an attack, beating or deliberately started fire. His mother says Raymond went to high school in the bluffs and had returned there in February, struggling as he had for years with alcoholism. Council Bluffs has no shelter for homeless men.