Dec. 20--A 63-year-old man has died, and a woman was seriously injured Saturday morning in a fire at a Far South Side home in the city's Rosemoor neighborhood.
Chicago firefighters were alerted shortly before 7 a.m. to a frame house in the 100 block of East 103rd Place, according to the Fire Department's news office.
Officials said the 63-year-old was pronounced dead, and a woman was taken to the hospital in serious to critical condition.
William Gordon, a resident of the house, shuffled through the debris of the yard and looked up at the house's gutted windows and charred frame.
"I'm distraught," he said. "I'm really distraught right now."
Gordon said that about 7 a.m. he heard someone yell, "Fire! Fire! Fire!" and sprinted to the nearest exit. The smoke was so intense that he had to leave immediately, he said, without taking anything with him.
He called the 63-year-old man "his lifelong friend."
Neighbors say three families live in the house, one on the first floor, one on the second floor and one in the basement. The 63-year-old had lived in the house for about 10 years and worked at a grocery store on East 105th Street and South Michigan Avenue, said neighbor Dorsey Hayes.
"He was a cool cat," Hayes said.
Hayes said he knew well the woman who was injured, as the two had attended Kohn Elementary School together in the mid-1980s.
Fire officials said the house had no gas service and an illegal electrical hook-up. There also were no working smoke detectors in the home. It was later determined the cause of the fire was illegal and overloaded electric wiring from the building next door that caused a pile of clothing to be ignited by hot extension cords.
