AT&T Workers Save Park Forest Woman From Explosion

An explosion in the first block of Bailey Road in Park Forest left a woman trapped on the second floor of her home. Luckily, two AT&T employees were nearby, fixing a cable.

Ron Shockley, 37, and his partner Garreth Carpenter, 35, said they were putting a damaged cable wire back together when they heard it.

"We heard this loud explosion and I’m like 'What the heck was that,'" said Shockley, who is from Tinley Park. "We heard this lady screaming and saw this house on the corner and it was engulfed in flames."

"I ran and got a ladder, and my partner carried her down the ladder," said Carpenter, who is from Bourbonnais.

Shockley said he climbed up the ladder and grabbed the unidentified woman from the second floor window and carried her down the street, away from the house.

The repairman said he then heard some alarming news.

"I asked her were there any kids, and she said 'my baby,'" Shockley said. "I said 'where's the baby?' She said at school. So the kid wasn't in the house."

After getting the woman to safety Shockley and Carpenter looked back at the house to find there wasn't much left.

"The house was not even there anymore," Carpenter said. "It was just hanging in the breeze."

Fire officials were not available for immediate information, but Carpenter said they were told the fire was probably caused by a gas leak.

As the Park Forest Fire Department secured the area, Shockley and Carpenter went back to work on fixing that cable wire.