A 24-year-old Harvey man who apparently went to sleep while cooking a meal at home was killed Thursday in a fire at the house.
Kenneth Sheriff arrived at his home in the 15000 block of South Hoyne Avenue about 2:30 a.m. Thursday, according to Harvey Deputy Fire Chief Charles Jackson. Sheriff then apparently placed a pot of food on the kitchen stove, turned on the burner and went to an upstairs bedroom to lie down, Jackson said.
Neighbors notified the Fire Department of the blaze in the brick-and-frame home at about 2:55 a.m. When firefighters arrived, the house was engulfed in flames, Jackson said.
Two other occupants of the house, identified by firefighters as relatives of Sheriff’s, escaped. One got out through a basement door, and the other exited from a side living room, Jackson said.
The two occupants told firefighters that they didn’t know whether Sheriff was at home when the fire started because they had been asleep. Nevertheless, they said they knocked on his bedroom door before fleeing the house.
Once outside, they telephoned a cousin who Sheriff had been with the night before and learned that the cousin had dropped off Sheriff at the house. They then told firefighters that they believed Sheriff was still in the house,
Firefighters tried to enter the building to search for Sheriff, but the flames were too intense, Jackson said. Sheriff’s body was recovered later from an upstairs rear bedroom, Jackson added.
Sheriff was taken to Ingalls Memorial Hospital in Harvey and pronounced dead at 4:25 a.m., a spokesman for the Cook County medical examiner’s office said.
State fire marshal investigators pinpointed the stove as the source of the fire, Jackson said. After the fire was extinguished, firefighters found one of the stove’s burner knobs in the on position and a melted aluminum pan on top of the burner, he added.
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The house, which is owned by Sheriff’s grandmother, was left uninhabitable, Jackson said. The roof over the second level collapsed, he noted.
Assisting in battling the blaze were firefighters from nearby Posen, Hazel Crest, Homewood, Dolton, Riverdale and Oak Forest.