Couple’s Residence Blown Up Throughout Their Marriage ceremony by Visitor Who Snuck Out and Then Died In Blast: Police

A pair was barely in a position to benefit from the feeling of being married once they began listening to phrase that their dwelling had blown up in a surprising Valentine’s Day weekend explosion within the Chicago suburb of Cicero.

The residential explosion reportedly occurred across the identical time owners Tom Davis and Eleni Vrettos have been saying their vows close by on Saturday, February 15.

The suspected offender was a person who had been in attendance, in keeping with the police investigation detailed by ABC affiliate WLS. The physique of Anthony Avila-Puebla, 31, was discovered on the scene and recognized on Saturday by the Prepare dinner County Medical Examiner’s Workplace.

In response to members of the family on the wedding ceremony of Davis and Vrettos, Avila-Puebla disappeared through the ceremony. Police decided that he’d been in a relationship with somebody who lived within the dwelling.

Surveillance footage captured Avila-Puebla pulling up and parking only a half a block from the home through the ceremony. He was additionally noticed taking jugs of what seemed to be flammable liquid inside, per WLS, at the least two totally different instances.

From the proof gathered, police decided that Avila-Puebla finally entered the house and set the fireplace, however he by no means got here again out. The explosion occurred simply after 4:50 p.m., per WGN, damaging two close by buildings, as effectively.

All members of the family who lived within the dwelling have been on the wedding ceremony when it exploded. A motive for the assault has not been decided.

“I ran right here in my wedding ceremony gown, like down the alley, and was watching from a neighbor’s yard,” Vrettos informed WGN. She stated she first bought phrase of the explosion inside minutes of claiming, “I do.”

“The whole lot was simply smoke at that time,” she stated of her arrival.

Because of the explosion, the house was a complete loss, with WLS reporting {that a} whole of 11 totally different households have been displaced. In response to Davis, there have been six cats within the dwelling on the time of the explosion and they’re all nonetheless lacking, presumed misplaced.

“They have been the right little bunch, like all of them bought alongside. I believed I might have them for years, they have been all a lot youthful, they usually have been my dwelling I might say,” Vrettos informed WGN of her cats, named Bambi, Graham, Reya, Tucker, Outdated Boy, and Gray.

“So now I don’t have a house and on prime of it, I don’t have them as my dwelling,” she added. “That’s probably the most devastating as a result of they’re those that give me the consolation via that darkness. My dad handed away a couple of years in the past so we don’t have the house as a remembrance of him, too.”

For Vrettos, the house held such a robust connection to household as a result of it was the one she grew up in. “The constructing belonged to my household for nearly 40 years,” she informed WLS shortly after the explosion.

“Yeah, I grew up right here, so I live– lived right here, and I work locally,” she continued. “And I imply, Cicero is all I actually know.”

She and Davis had just lately taken possession of the house, together with Vrettos’ brother, after it had been in her mom’s identify for practically 40 years.

The couple had reportedly deliberate to start their lives within the household dwelling. “We have been doing renovations on the home,” Davis informed WLS. “We have been going to make the underside portion of it business and lease it out, maybe as a storage unit whereas we lived up prime.”

In a GoFundMe established, the household additional detailed that they have been within the means of transferring their dwelling insurance coverage because of the renovation and possession switch, and so on the time of the blast there was “no protection to assist them get better from this devastating loss.”

The fundraiser has introduced in additional than $57,000.