1 dead after Sewickley Township house fire
SEWICKLEY TOWNSHIP, Pa. (KDKA) — One person is dead after a house fire in Sewickley Township.
Officials said fire crews were called to the Westmoreland County home on Yukon Road around 4 p.m. on Thursday.
Takoma Gantt and his brother, Bradley Cook, were riding their ATVs on Yukon Road when they heard what sounded like explosions.
"It was just a big boom," Gantt said.
Moments later, they watched flames shoot up into the air.
"We went over there to help them," Gantt said.
They ran down the street and a neighbor told them a man and a woman were still inside the home.
"She was on the back steps over there, and there was a bunch of smoke coming in," Cook said. "We were sitting there feeling around for hands and stuff."
They found the woman just a couple of feet from the door frame. Gantt grabbed her legs, Cook grabbed her arms, and together they carried her out.
"She couldn't talk, couldn't move, couldn't help herself," Gantt said.
Gantt said she was breathing but in shock. She only said one thing.
"'My husband's in there,'" Cook said.
Gantt wanted to go back in.
"I tried. Mom just wasn't having it. She was like you're not going in there," Gantt said.
Hutchinson Fire Chief Bill Dull said the man didn't make it out alive. Crews found him on the first floor around 4 p.m. He was later identified as 66-year-old David Wayne Shotts Sr.
EMS workers flew his wife, Ruth Shotts, to the hospital for smoke inhalation and burns to her airway. Her condition is unknown. The Hutchinson fire chief said he believes both are in their 60s.
Gantt and Cook hope she's OK and said they would do it all over again.
"It's a natural-born instinct," Gantt said.
"You never know who's in there. You've got to do what you can to protect whoever," Cook said.
However, they wish they could have done more.
"Not just sit back and watch," Gantt said.
"We tried everything we could have," Cook said. "It's the only thing we could do."
No word on a cause of the fire. State police and the fire marshal are investigating.
Dull is aware of reports of explosions.
"One of the occupants was actually on oxygen, so we're thinking that it probably had something to do with the oxygen," Dull said.