Mother and sons feared dead after shop blast kills 5
Family of three missing Cops probe the cause
A MUM and two teenage sons are feared to be among five people killed in an explosion that destroyed a shop and flat.
Mary Ragoobar, 46, and Shane, 18, and Sean, 17, have been missing since a fireball tore through their home on Sunday.
Shane’s girlfriend, named locally as Leah Reek, 18, is believed to have died. A fifth, as yet unnamed, body was found in the rubble.
Mary’s 15-year-old son, Scotty, survived the explosion – reported in yesterday’s Daily Mirror – and is recovering in hospital.
He is with his dad Jose, 58, who was out of the two-storey flat at work at the time of the blast. Some social media posts claim Shane may be alive but critically ill.
Scotty’s uncle Krishna Rungen, 69, said the boy is in a daze but talking. He had been watching TV with his mum and brothers.
Mr Rungen said: “The next thing he knows bricks were falling over him and then it was pitch black.
ESCAPE
“He was crying for help and someone pulled him from the rubble and wrapped him in a blanket and took him to hospital.
“He still doesn’t know his family are missing. He thinks they might be injured. It is an awful situation.”
Aram Kurd, 33, owner of the grocers below, had a lucky escape. when he went to get beer from a storeroom moments before the blast. He said: “I was just reaching for a crate of beer to take to the fridges when I was flung into the air and landed on my back.
“I scrambled to my feet and was surrounded to my knees in dust, rubble and flames.”
He escaped over a neighbour’s fence. He was working with a Latvian woman called Viktorija, 22, who was on her first trial shift.
He has no idea what happened to her and is praying she is safe.
Police said that five people remain in hospital following the explosion in Leicester.
CCTV footage of the blast showed debris flying across the street, hitting cars driving by.
An unidentified person could be seen walking towards the shop door as the blast happened.
Locals dug through the rubble using their bare hands looking for survivors. And a group of men lifted a girder off an adult casualty before helping an injured child, believed to be Scotty.
Police are investigating the blast’s cause but have ruled out terrorism. City mayor Sir Peter Soulsby said: “It was an accident. A gas explosion seems the most plausible cause.”