A widower made it outside of his burning Roseville house only to go back inside to rescue his dog minutes before the house became engulfed in flames, neighbors said Sunday.
The widower, identified by neighbors as John Balkevitch, died after some type of apparent explosion shook the structure and then set it afire. His dog, Lexi, apparently was killed also.
“He loved that dog,” neighbor Jackie Chaviz said.
Chaviz said there a loud boom coming from the single-story house shortly before noon Saturday that resulted in several residents coming outside of their homes on 16900 block of Common Road, east of Groesbeck Highway. Within seconds, the house filled with white smoke before it went up in flames.
“When anything happened in the house, his dog would go right for the basement,” Chaviz said. “He could say ‘let’s go for a walk’ and that dog would head toward the basement.
“So we heard that sound and John ran outside. He must have realized his dog was still in the house, so he went back into get the dog. He didn’t come back out.”
Fire officials couldn’t be reached for comment Sunday. On Saturday, they said no details would be released on information as they were still investigating what caused the blast.
Firefighters from Roseville and St. Clair Shores flooded the area along with Roseville police officers shortly after the explosion. They were on the scene for several hours working to extinguish the fire and clean up the debris afterward.
A Doordash driver who was in the area at the time said he tried to rescue Balkevitch. He learned the widower’s first name from neighbors, and began yelling for the man outside the home and attempting to break windows on the home in an effort to reach him.
“By the time I got to the house and was yelling for the guy that lived there,” the driver told (WJBK-TV (Fox 2). “There no response or anything like that.”
Chaviz, the neighbor, suspects there was some sort of natural gas leak. He noted Balkevitch had recently purchased a new furnace.
“Like I said, there were no flames that we could see, but as soon as he ran back inside, flames shot out. It had to be gas,” he said.
Balkevitch, 81, had worked for a Clinton Township automotive plant.
He was a supporter of former President Donald Trump and the Detroit Lions, neighbors said. They described him as a “lonely guy” following the death of his wife of 48 years, Marylyn, in 2020.
Chaviz said: “I still have the last message he sent me about the Lions. Something about the state of Michigan is going be terrorized on Sunday. I really don’t (know) what he was trying to say.”
Balkevitch is survived by two daughters, Stacie Krause and Kimberly Comito, and seven grandchildren.