Couple Killed in Chicago Heights House Fire

Cause of the blaze under investigation

A married couple died early Friday in a house fire in south suburban Chicago Heights.

The flames broke out around 1:40 a.m. in the 200 block of East 24th Street, fire officials said. Neighbors said the entire front of the home was on fire when they heard sirens.

"I happened to look out and I saw the front porch mainly up in flames," neighbor Courtney Wilson said.

There is no sign of any working smoke detectors, the fire chief said, so the couple may not have known until too late that their home was on fire.

Firefighters ran into the burning home where they found a man and woman in a second-floor bedroom. They rushed the two out of the home, but the woman, identified by family members as 47-year-old Lillian Hill Harrison, had already passed away.

The chief said first responders tried to save 43-year-old Lemont Harrison, an amputee, but he passed away.

"Their bedroom's upstairs, so they were probably up there asleep, and the fire went so fast," Lillian Hill Harrison's father, Charles Cowan, said.

Neighbors said they have seen children at the home before, but the fire chief said the two adults were the only ones inside when the fire broke out.

The fire marshal was on the scene trying to find a cause of the blaze. Neighbors said at one point both the car out front and the house were on fire. It's not clear which came first.
 

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