Couple’s Home Blown Up During Their Wedding by Guest Who Snuck Out and Then Died In Blast: Police

A couple was barely able to enjoy the feeling of being married when they started hearing word that their home had blown up in a shocking Valentine’s Day weekend explosion in the Chicago suburb of Cicero.

The residential explosion reportedly occurred around the same time homeowners Tom Davis and Eleni Vrettos were saying their vows nearby on Saturday, February 15.

The suspected culprit was a man who had been in attendance, according to the police investigation detailed by ABC affiliate WLS. The body of Anthony Avila-Puebla, 31, was found at the scene and identified on Saturday by the Cook County Medical Examiner’s Office.

According to family members at the wedding of Davis and Vrettos, Avila-Puebla disappeared during the ceremony. Police determined that he’d been in a relationship with someone who lived in the home.

Surveillance footage captured Avila-Puebla pulling up and parking just a half a block from the house during the ceremony. He was also spotted taking jugs of what appeared to be flammable liquid inside, per WLS, at least two different times.

From the evidence gathered, police determined that Avila-Puebla ultimately entered the home and set the fire, but he never came back out. The explosion happened just after 4:50 p.m., per WGN, damaging two nearby buildings, as well.

All family members who lived in the home were at the wedding when it exploded. A motive for the attack has not been determined.

“I ran here in my wedding dress, like down the alley, and was watching from a neighbor’s yard,” Vrettos told WGN. She said she first got word of the explosion within minutes of saying, “I do.”

“Everything was just smoke at that point,” she said of her arrival.

As a result of the explosion, the home was a total loss, with WLS reporting that a total of 11 different families were displaced. According to Davis, there were six cats in the home at the time of the explosion and they are all still missing, presumed lost.

“They were the perfect little bunch, like they all got along. I thought I would have them for years, they were all much younger, and they were my home I would say,” Vrettos told WGN of her cats, named Bambi, Graham, Reya, Tucker, Old Boy, and Grey.

“So now I don’t have a home and on top of it, I don’t have them as my home,” she added. “That’s the most devastating because they’re the ones that give me the comfort through that darkness. My dad passed away a few years ago so we don’t have the home as a remembrance of him, too.”

For Vrettos, the home held such a strong connection to family because it was the one she grew up in. “The building belonged to my family for almost 40 years,” she told WLS shortly after the explosion.

“Yeah, I grew up here, so I live– lived here, and I work in the community,” she continued. “And I mean, Cicero is all I really know.”

She and Davis had recently taken ownership of the home, along with Vrettos’ brother, after it had been in her mother’s name for nearly 40 years.

The couple had reportedly planned to begin their lives in the family home. “We were doing renovations on the house,” Davis told WLS. “We were going to make the bottom portion of it commercial and rent it out, perhaps as a storage unit while we lived up top.”

In a GoFundMe established, the family further detailed that they were in the process of transferring their home insurance due to the renovation and ownership transfer, and so at the time of the blast there was “no coverage to help them recover from this devastating loss.”

The fundraiser has brought in more than $57,000.