(Published Thursday, Feb. 27, 2014) 
 
 After escaping an early-morning house fire, a Plano man was killed Thursday when he went back in the burning house for his mobile phone, officials say. Rex Benson, 72, was initially able to escape the powerful blaze just after 1 a.m. on Haggard St. in Plano, Tex., but inexplicably braved the sky-high flames with another man to retrieve a phone to call 911, fire officials said. The unidentified companion escaped, but Benson was unable to cheat death twice — he was found dead inside the house by members of the Plano Fire Department, officials said. Peggy Harrell told the Daily News. “Just very sad.” 
 
 Benson lived at the one-story brick house with his adult daughter and an unidentified roommate, Harrell said. When firefighters arrived at the home at 1:08 a.m. — three minutes after the initial call came over — the home was “fully engulfed,” Harrell said. Harrell said in her experience that roughly 90% of people who go back into a fire don’t make it out alive. “This is a notch in the statistic on the wrong end.” 
 
 Benson's adult daughter and an unidentified roommate were able to escape the fire and survive. “I know he realized probably he didn't have his cell phone, but that's definitely replaceable, but he wasn't.” 
 
 The cause of the fire is still under investigation, but no foul play is suspected.
– A Texas man who escaped a burning building with his life but not his phone made the fatal mistake of going back for it, firefighters say. Rex Benson, 72, his adult daughter, and another man made it out of their Plano home when the fire started around 1am yesterday, but the two men decided to brave the flames and go back in to retrieve their phones to call 911; a neighbor tells the Dallas Morning News he had to stop Benson's daughter from following them in. Firefighters, who were alerted to the fire by someone's call and arrived within minutes of it, found the house fully engulfed in flames and Benson's body inside, NBCDFW reports. "It was big enough to get your attention," says the neighbor of the fire. "It was a terrible miscalculation on their part. A terrible accident," a fire department spokeswoman tells the New York Daily News. "I don't think people realize how quickly fire grows. Evidentially, they felt they had the time to go back in," she says, explaining that people should never go back into a burning building—and 90% of those that do don't make it out alive. "This is a notch in the statistic on the wrong end." (In Chicago last month, two men died after jumping into the Chicago River to retrieve a dropped phone.)