LARAMIE (WNE) — A 50-year-old Albany County man died last week after running back into his burning house.

That’s one of the findings of Richard Embrey, a veteran investigator for the Wyoming State Fire Marshal’s Office, who also determined that Garth Churches’ death was accidental.

The Sept. 30 fire started in the stovepipe of a woodstove in a bedroom in the back of the house, Embrey said. There was apparently something wrong with the junction where the pipe enters into the ceiling and a fire began burning in the attic.

Churches’ wife and three children also were in the house at the time the fire broke out, but they all escaped without serious injury, Embrey said.

According to Churches’ wife, he got out through a sliding glass door in the bedroom, but then reentered the structure for some unknown reason, Embrey said. “When he did that, he walked right into some thick smoke and superheated air, and he asphyxiated.”