Russell Springs Fire Chief H.M. Bottom has determined that the mobile home fire last Saturday night that killed two four-year-old boys was “accidental with an undetermined ignition” after an investigation by local, state and federal authorities.

Bottom said the joint investigation included the Russell Springs Police Department, State Police Arson Investigator Alex Wesley, a deputy from the state fire marshal’s office as well as investigators from the Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms’ Bowling Green office.

Officials found no evidence of foul play but also did not find an exact cause of the fire, Bottom said.

Police and fire units were dispatched out at 9:12 p.m. last Saturday to the intersection of Short St. and Lakeway Dr., across from Veterans’ Fairgrounds.

When local authorities arrived on the scene moments later they spotted fire coming out of the rear window of the home.

Officials said family and neighbors tried to reach the two boys but the intense heat and smoke was too much to overcome.

The bodies of Aaron Curry and Hayden Aaron Oseguera-Paxtian were recovered from a bathroom inside the home and efforts to resuscitate them weren’t successful and they were pronounced dead by Deputy Coroner Troy Harris. A preliminary autopsy report by the State Medical Examiner’s Office in Frankfort earlier last week said the two boys died of smoke inhalation.

Bottom said the family of Juan Oseguera lived in the mobile home and that family and friends had gathered Saturday evening at the home for a birthday party.

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A Russell Springs man was indicted last Wednesday by a federal grand jury meeting in Bowling Green on a single charge of conspiracy to engage in contraband cigarette trafficking, according to David J. Hale, United States Attorney for the Western District of Kentucky.

David B. Cooper, 46, is charged with knowingly conspiring to commit an offense against the United States by means of possession and receipt of contraband cigarettes. According to the indictment, between March 2007 and August 2007 in Russell County and elsewhere, the defendant, as owner and operator of DS Marketing, LLC, knowingly possessed contraband cigarettes in quantities greater than 10,000, which bore no evidence of the payment of the applicable state excise tax stamps.

Further, from March of 2007 to August 2007, Cooper’s company, DS Marketing, located in Russell Springs, was an unlicensed tobacco distribution company that sold and shipped unstamped cigarettes to retail customers, primarily through mail order and telephone.

The indictment further alleges that from March 2007 to about August 2007, Cooper and his co-conspirators defrauded the Commonwealth of Kentucky, and other states, of approximately $97,487.80 in state excise, sales and use taxes, including approximately $43,241.97 that involved the sale of unstamped cigarettes manufactured by Cooper’s company Tantus Tobacco, LLC, located in Russell Springs.

If convicted at trial, Cooper faces no more than five years in prison, a $250,000 fine, and a three year period of supervised release. He is scheduled to appear before Magistrate Judge H. Brent Brennenstuhl, in Bowling Green, on October 9 at 11 a.m.

This case is being prosecuted by Special Assistant United States Attorney Micah R. Reyner and was investigated by Alcohol, Tobacco, Firearms and Explosives (ATF).

The indictment of a person by a grand jury is an accusation only and that person is presumed innocent until and unless proven guilty.