MEDINA, Ohio — Medina Village Apartments were undergoing construction about a week before an apartment explosion killed a bedridden teen and his mother Thursday morning.
Resident Kevin Braun lives three units away from the apartment that exploded and caught fire. He said Thursday that he smelled gas after construction was completed.
Braun said that he told maintenance about the smell, but he never heard anything back.
The explosion rocked him from his sleep. He saw the lights of the fire trucks flashing as he looked out the window.
“I heard a loud boom, I thought it was a car,” he said. “I thought a truck literally hit our building or something because I felt the thump.”
Braun said that he didn’t know the mother and son, but he is a care taker and heard that the son was autistic, Braun said.
During the summer he would see a wheelchair outside.
Medina Fire Department Chief Bob Painter said the unit exploded about 3:15 a.m. followed by a fire at the apartment complex in the 300 block of Springbrook Drive near Crestwood Park.
The teen’s mother and father suffered burns over 80 percent of their bodies. Their special-needs son was killed when the apartment collapsed.
Channel 19 reported that the teen’s mother died after being taken to an area hospital by helicopter.
A quarter of the building collapsed.
The cause of the explosion has not been determined. Columbia Gas is on scene along with the Ohio State Fire Marshal. Columbia Gas spokesman
Firefighters went into “defensive mode” to extinguish the fire, Painter said. There were 20 people that were evacuated.
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