Mother, teen son killed in Cicero house fire; rest of family rescued, officials say

CICERO, Ill. (WLS) -- A mother and her teenage son were killed in a fire that engulfed their home in the west suburbs on Wednesday morning.

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At 5:15 a.m. the Cicero Fire Department received a call about a large fire at a home near 29th Street and 51st Avenue.

Officials said the initial fire was at an abandoned home that spread to the house of the Armas family.

When crews arrived, they were able to rescue three people: a 14-year-old boy, his father and his grandmother, officials said.

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"There was five family members living in that building. We did have a rescue. The crews on the scene did rescue an elderly person from that house, brought her down by a ladder," battalion chief Jonathan Sochacki said.

However, flames trapped a mother and her 16-year-old son in the attic. Both died as a result of the fire, officials said.

They were identified as Aura Armas and Luis Armas Jr., according to city officials.

Neighbors said they could hear the family screaming for help in the early morning.

"It's just shocking to me. You know somebody one day, and the next day, they're just not there. It's shocking," neighbor Melanie Espino said.

Three of the family's dogs made it out safely.

"I smelled the smell of smoke, and someone screaming like, 'help me' in the morning. I woke up to that. And I got up because my dogs were barking all crazy," neighbor Jayden Alfaro said.

Daylight revealed the devastation left behind Wednesday.

Neighbors say the family was very nice and pretty much stayed to themselves.

"The two kids, they are both in high school, and the mom and the dad, they are really quiet," neighbor Daisy Alfaro said.

Firefighters spent most of the morning putting out hotspots.

The family is now staying with relatives in a nearby suburb.

Fire investigators are looking for the cause of the fire, figuring out where it started initially with the abandoned home and how it spread to the occupied house.

Berwyn, Oak Park, Stickney, North Riverside, Forest Park and River Forest provided their fire departments to assist with the fire.