A grandfather, Elijah Grays, had planned to spend his weekend with his family celebrating his birthday and the arrival of a new grandson.<\/p>\n
Instead, he was left mourning the loss of three children, two grandchildren and two friends.<\/p>\n
Family friend Kym Hackett says Grays was devastated by his loss.<\/p>\n
WBBM’s Steve Miller spoke with a South Side pastor who knew three of the victims well: 20-year-old Byron Reed, his girlfriend 18-year-old Sallie Gist and their three-year-old son Rayshawn Reed.<\/p>\n
Byron Reed was expected at church that Sunday.\u00a0 The day he died.<\/p>\n
Pastor Glenn Moyer of Apostolic Little Rock Church says he knew Byron Reed all his life.\u00a0 Watched as he took on the responsibilities of fatherhood.<\/p>\n
“I remember when he used to come on the bus from Cicero.\u00a0 When he’d come to church, he’d bring his son with him. They’d be all bundled up.<\/p>\n
“Byron took more time, I thought, to make sure that his son was all right, than anybody else.”<\/p>\n
Pastor Moyer says that doesn’t mean that the boy’s mother Sallie Gist didn’t take care of Rayshawn.<\/p>\n
“Because Sallie did.\u00a0 But Byron was always there…\u00a0 They really adored each other, his son and him.”<\/p>\n
Pastor Moyer says he will always remember Byron Reed’s smile: a grin “that made you happy just because he was smiling.”<\/p>\n
“He was always volunteering to do different things for different people at the church.”<\/p>\n
Pastor Moyer says Byron Reed was trying to get his GED, trying to get his life together so he could do something with it.<\/p>\n
Pastor Moyer says he’s not asking where God was in this tragedy.\u00a0 He says it’s God who will help the families get through this tragedy.<\/p>\n
Read the original article from WBBM News Radio<\/a>.<\/p>\n Distributed via Chicago Press Release Services<\/a><\/p>\n CICERO, Ill. — Authorities are continuing to seek answers to questions of how a weekend fire started, then killed seven people at a suburban Chicago home. Fire fighters haven’t publicly speculated about a possible cause. Those who died including a 3-day-old baby and a 3-year-old boy. Cicero Assistant Fire Marshal Ron Opalecky has said investigators […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-326684","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326684","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=326684"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/326684\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=326684"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=326684"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/mereja.media\/index\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=326684"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}<\/img><\/a>
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