Kevin Devine was last seen outside of his Boston Street apartment complex in Altadena on Jan. 7, hours after the deadly Eaton fire ignited. Weeks passed without word of his fate.
The county medical examiner’s office has confirmed that Devine, 54, died in that fire. His remains were discovered April 2 in the 900 block of Boston Street, one block east of Lake Avenue.
He is the 18th person known to have died in the Eaton fire, and the only victim to perish east of Lake Avenue. Devine was identified in the Medical Examiner’s website on April 22.
An actor and substitute teacher, Devine spoke on the evening of Jan. 7 to his worried mother in Michigan, who called after seeing reports of fires in Los Angeles.
“I said, ‘Kevin, you have to leave,’ ” Margaret Devine told The Times in January. “He said, ‘I’m OK, Mom.’ ”
Devine’s landlord saw him in his car outside the apartment complex around 9 p.m., roughly three hours after the fire broke out on a hillside above Eaton Canyon Wash. It was his last reported sighting.
As emergency crews combed the charred streets of Altadena in the following days, Devine was nowhere to be found. There was no sign of his car. His family called hospitals and evacuation shelters. They began speaking of him in the past tense.
On April 2, a special operations team from the medical examiner’s office responded to a report of possible human remains found on the block where he was last seen. The office has since confirmed that they belonged to Devine, who died of burns and smoke inhalation.
Thirty people are known to have died in the Palisades and Eaton fires, which together destroyed more than 16,000 homes in Los Angeles County in early January. All have been publicly identified but one, a person whose remains were found on Las Lomas Avenue in Pacific Palisades.
Reporter Noah Goldberg contributed to this report.
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