Man's body found in burning car in Uptown Dallas

DALLAS - A death investigation in uptown Dallas is underway after a man’s body was found in a burning car Thursday afternoon.

The car was on the top floor of a parking garage near West Village, surrounded by plenty of apartments and businesses.

One witness said he was working at a nearby suit store when he heard a loud boom and felt the ground shake.

“I could tell it was a noticeable explosion, so I ran through my store and out the back,” said James Bartley.

After hearing the commotion, Bartley ran up three flights of stairs and reached the top floor of the public parking garage located at the intersection of McKinney and Lemmon Avenue.

“You could see that the whole top part of the car had exploded out, so you didn't even have much of the frame of the top part of the car,” he said. “The windows had exploded. It was burning at a very fast rate.”

Bartley says a White Kia parked by itself in an area normally used by retail employees was already engulfed in flames in the seconds it took him to get to the scene.

Worried the gas tank was going to explode, Bartley said he went down to a lower level where other people had started to gather and called 911.

Dallas firefighters put the flames out in a matter of minutes. That was when they discovered the body of a man burned inside.

People who live in the apartments that overlook the garage watched from their balconies as Dallas police officers and crime scene investigators processed the gruesome scene, leaving people to wonder what happened there and why.

Dallas Fire-Rescue is working in conjunction with DPD to determine the cause of the fire. It will be up to the medical examiner to determine the cause of death.