Racine County Woman Dies After Mysteriously Falling Into Fire Pit

A Racine County woman has died after a week-long fight for her life when she sustained nearly 80 percent burns over her body from mysteriously falling into a fire pit, according to Madison. On the evening of September 12, 57-year-old Shelley Baumann, who operated a small cleaning business, attended a get-together with her friends at a house on 6700 block of Ptarmigan Road in Mount Pleasant for a night of fun when it suddenly took a turn for the worst.

According to her 34-year-old niece Rachel Hulsey, who did not attend the get-together, Baumann and another couple were sitting outside on the back porch next to a fire pit while the rest of the group were next door, watching a boxing match. After a few moments, the couple headed next door with everyone else, leaving Baumann alone. What happened next will forever remain a mystery. When Baumann’s group of friends returned to the back porch, they discovered her lying in the fire pit. It appeared she had accidently fallen into the fire pit and couldn’t pull herself out.

The group who attended the get-together claim they were “not 100 percent sure how much time had passed” since she had been laying in the fire pit, but “Everything from her knee all the way to her neck is very, very bad with third and fourth degree burns,” said Hulsey. “She was wedged in and just couldn’t pull herself up.

Baumann was taken to the burns unit at Columbia St. Mary’s Hospital in Milwaukee by helicopter where doctors expected her to be in a medically induced coma for six months. But after a six-day fight for her life, she succumbed to her injuries at approximately 4:50 p.m. on September 18, according to Fox 6 Now.

Family and friends initially set-up a GoFundMe page to help pay for her medical bills, but they are now in need of giving her a “final send off.” They have thus far accumulated $680 in donations, but hope to raise $4,000.

“These are people she’d come hang out with. She liked this place. Even before this happened they had pictures of her on their Facebook Page,” said Hulsey, a 34-year-old clerk at Racine City Hall. “We heard her friends were down here and we wanted to come down and say thank you and hear some good stories about her and pass around the (collection) jar. This is what she would have wanted.”

“She was always the life of the party. She wouldn’t want us to be sad.”

The Mount Pleasant Police Department does not suspect foul play in the mysterious pit fire death of Shelley Baumann, and has stated that the investigation is closed.

[Image via Fox 6 Now]