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ELK RIDGE, Utah County — A 19-year-old man who died in a house explosion in the town of Elk Ridge on Friday has been identified by the Utah County Sheriff's Office.
The sheriff's office posted a statement on social media Saturday afternoon identifying the man as Eric Ammon Cheney. A cause for the explosion is still under investigation, the statement says.
Police received reports of a house explosion Friday about 4:45 p.m. on Friday. The house is located near 300 Elk Ridge Drive, close to the Gladstan Golf Course.
"I had just stepped into my home and I heard this great, big explosion, and it just kind of rocked my home, and I thought: Did a plane come down? Or what bomb went off in our neighborhood?" neighbor Julie Cloward told KSL-TV. "And so I ran outside — I only had my socks on — ran to the street, and I looked up and I could tell something wasn't right."
The explosion happened in the garage, which sustained extensive damage, Utah County Sheriff's Sgt. Spencer Cannon said. Several other homes also dealing with a lot of damage due to all the large debris that flew out.
"When you have something like this, you want to make sure everybody in the surrounding area is safe, that there's no other immediate danger there," Cannon said. "When you have the explosion itself, there's debris everywhere in the immediate area of the explosion, and so you have to be very careful as you work your way through that."
Investigators spent several hours at the home Friday night. There weren't any other reports of people injured due to this explosion.
