Chapter 1: What events led to the discovery of a burned-out car?
It's an early morning in January. It's windy, it's dark, it's icy and snowy. It's honestly a pretty miserable winter morning and a car is traveling down a road called Arrowhead. It was blustery, it was a snowstorm and that's typical for that area. It is in ski country. This driver, a staff member of the Alpine Ski Club, knows the lay of the land.
As he's driving south, it's pretty alarming for him to see a bit of an orange glow in the distance. This is really unusual. He realizes, okay, something's going on, stops the car, opens his door, starts walking towards this light, leans over the guardrail and in the ditch is a car on fire. The 911 call came in at 5.54 in the morning.
One of the concerns was though is that it's a car fire and if there was a body in the vehicle.
And what kind of vehicle is it?
I can't tell. It's fully engulfed.
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Chapter 2: What evidence was found at the scene of the fire?
It's down in the ditch, about 75 feet down.
And you don't know if there's anybody around?
I have no idea.
The person who called 911 was also a part-time volunteer firefighter. And he took some pictures of the scene.
It's like a minivan. I don't know if there's anybody in it. It looks like there's footprints in the snow. Okay.
It looks like they must have come up and got out of the vehicle in time.
One of the things that he said was that it looked like there were tracks leading from the vehicle up out to the road. Footprints? Footprints. In the snow? In the snow.
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Chapter 3: How did the investigation unfold after the body was discovered?
Like a little trench. There were some track marks in the snow. As if somebody had walked out of the snow? Yes. My name is Ryan Martin. I'm captain with the Collingwood Fire Department. We were dispatched at 6.13 and we were on scene at 6.22. Within a matter of minutes, All of a sudden this quiet country road starts transforming into a scene of intense action.
Emergency responders dealing with a very sort of weird and unusual event.
By the time Captain Martin and his firefighters arrived on the scene, they estimated that the fire had been going for at least 20 minutes, if not more.
We were fully expecting to find a vehicle that had self-extinguished. Realistically, there probably wouldn't be a lot left of a vehicle that was in a free-burning state after 20 minutes. So it was surprising to turn the corner to see it still fully involved in fire. The fire behavior wasn't characteristic of a typical vehicle fire.
Chapter 4: What were the initial findings of the autopsy?
They had begun to attack the fire from approximately the top of this hill. It was difficult to advance the hose line just because of the slope of the hill, and they were dragging it through fairly deep snow at the time.
Every time that we applied water to the fire, we would blacken the fire down, and as soon as we stopped our extinguishing efforts, it would flare back up as if we hadn't made any progress at all. It was a very stubborn fire to extinguish. We had both Town of Blue and Collingwood fighting the fire at this point in time, and the flames just continued to flare back up.
We did deplete our entire water tank in the process of extinguishing the fire, which is very uncommon. The fire characteristics were not normal. The visibility was poor around the vehicle. We were contending with thick black smoke and we were applying water to the vehicle. We were generating a lot of steam, which impaired our ability to get a good look inside the vehicle.
Firefighter Parks pried open the driver's side door and was able to sweep the driver's seat with his arm. He scanned the car with the thermal imaging camera as well as swept the driver's seat with his arm, which appeared to be empty at the time. That's as far as he could get into the vehicle. At that point, there was a lot of things running through our mind.
Chapter 5: What were the circumstances surrounding Ashley's disappearance?
We were confused about the driver's seat being empty. We had checked with the drone in the immediate surrounding area and we couldn't locate anybody else in the area. When they extinguished the fire, that's when everything changed. Approximately 7.09 AM, the radio call went out over the air that there was a patient inside the vehicle.
From that point on, the scene was turned over to the OPP, the Ontario Provincial Police. When they extinguished the fire, they found a human body. It was in the front passenger footwell. they believed at that time to be a child.
One of the fears that ran through our mind was that if a parent was driving and left the scene to go get help while the vehicle was still relatively intact, and then the vehicle took fire with somebody inside, and that was very scary to us. My first thought might have been that there could have been a drunk driver that went off the road.
The vehicle got stuck on the side of a mountain and it caught fire and somebody may have left. But we just at that point, we didn't really know what we had. You could see that there were track marks, there were road crews there, police were there. They closed off the road for several hours to figure out exactly what the path of the vehicle was, how it ended up down the embankment.
At the end of our shift that day, our accident reconstructionist experts were there still processing the scene.
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Chapter 6: What role did James play in the events leading up to the tragedy?
There was a lot of questions that we had and a lot of answers we didn't have yet. After the body was found in the car, it becomes a more serious traffic investigation. I don't normally get involved in fatal crashes. When I do get involved, I'm going to treat that death like a homicide until I can prove that it's not. In this case, we're going to use everything at our disposal.
All our very skilled traffic investigators and our detectives canvassed the area. When the reconstructionists are there walking in the snow and they step on the license plate, which got clipped off the vehicle, it gave us the order. That's when we went to his house.
What happened when you knocked on the door?
In the Blue Mountains, you've got mountains to the west, you've got water to the north, you've got farmland to the east, and it's honestly beautiful.
It's a four-season wonderland. In the autumn, the colors are beautiful. The skiing in the winter is fabulous.
The summer, we're on the Georgian Bay and you can swim anywhere.
Blue Mountains, which is mostly sort of a resort town.
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Chapter 7: How did the police gather evidence against James?
And then right next to it is Collingwood. And Collingwood is more of sort of an actual place to live.
It's a really nice place to raise a family. And you have that small town feel of kind of everyone knows everyone.
This is small town Collingwood. Word travels real quickly about a death.
Police are now putting together the pieces after a fatal crash in Blue Mountains.
When they extinguished the fire, they found a human body. There was only one body in the car, and they couldn't figure out who was that person. When the reconstructions are there, walking in the snow, and they step on the license plate, which got clipped off the vehicle, it gave us the owner, James Schwab.
Right at the beginning, when they find that license plate, it's entirely conceivable that that's James Schwamm in that car. James Schwamm was a firefighter with Brampton Fire and Emergency Services. He was 38 years old. He lived in Collingwood. James Schwamm had a beautiful family.
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Chapter 8: What was the outcome of the trial and its impact on the community?
He was married to Ashley Milnes. They had two wonderful children. So we got his address. That's when we went to his house.
What happened when you knocked on the door?
Nothing. No one was there. It's a normal Thursday workday. So after we left, we went to do a little more digging. I knew somebody who worked for the same fire department. So I called her. And I asked, what can you tell me about this guy? We've got a fatal collision. We're looking for a next of kin. The colleague says, let me see if I can reach him. When she calls, she doesn't get an answer.
And so she's starting to worry. And her next response is, well, I should tell Ashley. She calls Ashley's work and learns she didn't show up for work that morning. So now she's thinking, okay, what the hell is going on?
They were a popular family. Absolutely.
They did a lot of things together as a family. They were all both very present in their kid's life. Everyone seemed, everyone seemed happy.
They call it a million dollar family, I guess, where you have your boy and your girl and they both have great jobs. They live in a beautiful area in the community.
James Schwalm and Ashley Milnes, who people called AJ, were both born and raised in Toronto.
When I met Lindsay, Ashley's older sister, you realize this is a really genuinely tight-knit family. What was it like growing up one of four? It was fun. It was busy, I have to say. Kudos to my mom. And how did Ashley fit into all that? She was just a bubbly, blonde-haired, cute thing. She was just this spunky, funny kid full of life. I know her nickname is Boob. Boob came from Yogi Berra.
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