A 37-year-old woman died Monday afternoon in a fire in the South Side apartment building she owned.
Simone Johnson-Wilson, of the 6800 block of South Calumet Avenue, was found “on the second-floor living area, and that’s where the majority of the fire was,” said Chicago Fire Department spokesman Kevin MacGregor. “I don’t know what happened to her or why she was unable to get out.”
Firefighters were called to the home at about noon, and the fire was put out within a half hour, after which firefighters found the body. “It was a small fire … but it was going well in that area, and that’s where she was at.”
No one else was home. Johnson-Wilson’s brother-in-law, Richard Williams, said the mother of four owned the two-story graystone and rented out the first floor to her nephew. Her nephew was not home, and none of her children lived with her, he said.
“She was an outgoing person, who got along with everybody,” Williams said, adding she was a construction worker and renovated the home she had lived in for more than two decades.
But she apparently had fallen on hard times recently and was using space heaters because gas service had been shut off. “I just found out through a family member today,” Williams said. “We didn’t know that she had no heat. There were certain things that she’d let you know about, and certain things she kept to herself.”
Joy Turner, 21, who lives next door, said she had no idea the woman was living without heat. “She was a very caring person,” Turner said.
Officials from Peoples Energy could not be reached for comment Monday night.
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Johnson-Wilson had four children, a married daughter and three minor children in foster homes, Williams said. He did not know why they were not living with their mother.
The cause of the fire was not known though it appeared to have started in the front room on the second floor where Johnson-Wilson’s body was found, MacGregor said. An autopsy was scheduled for Tuesday.
If the autopsy shows she died because of the fire, Johnson-Wilson would be the ninth fire-related fatality in Chicago this year, MacGregor said.
Earlier Monday, two people escaped a fire that gutted their two-story home in Oak Lawn after their dog awoke them.
The occupants–identified by neighbors as Georgia Lalezas and her adult son Bill–were asleep on the second floor of the home in the 10300 block of South Georgia Lane when the family dog, a Rottweiler named Bruno, woke them up, said Oak Lawn Division Fire Chief Ed Folliard.
The mother and son escaped unharmed, but the dog did not survive, Folliard said.
The cause of the fire, which apparently started near a water heater and furnace in the basement of the home at about 4 a.m., was under investigation Monday, Folliard said.
About 50 firemen from Oak Lawn and surrounding suburbs battled the blaze for about two hours. Frozen fire hydrants hampered the fire-fighting effort, according to Folliard, and three firefighters were slightly injured when they slipped on ice.