BELLEVILLE, Ill. — A family in southeast Missouri is holding each other close after a house explosion killed three of its members two weeks ago.
5 On Your Side spoke exclusively to a local woman who lost loved ones in that home explosion.
"I feel like my heart's just been torn out my chest," Carla Pyles said.
Pyles lost her 22-year-old daughter and her three-year-old granddaughter in that explosion. Her daughter's 23-year-old boyfriend also died.
It started as a 2-year-old's birthday celebration for the family, but it became the moment that not only changed their lives but took a part of them, forever.
"I feel like this is a nightmare I have to wake up from," Pyles said.
Pyles's 22-year-old daughter Miranda, and three-year-old granddaughter, Kaimana, lived in that house. Pyles said she knew something was wrong that morning.
"Me and Miranda talk every morning, I video chat with the kids every morning, and I never got a call that morning," she said.
Pyles said her daughter's boyfriend Corey got up that morning to make breakfast. She said he lit the stove, and the house blew. She said that explosion sent her daughter flying out of the house, and burned Corey's body completely, killing both of them and their daughter.
"I miss her. Just our talks, even to hear her voice, their voice. Both of them, all three of them," Pyles said.
Despite the hole in her heart, Pyles said there's one thing she keeps repeating to herself: "God needs them more than we do."
And, above all else, knowing that Miranda and Corey risked their own lives to save the children in the house, to their very last breaths.
"Corey walked over, told her he loved her, then she passed out. As soon as they put him in the ambulance, he passed away," she said.
Pyles told 5 On Your Side there were ten people in the home altogether.
The family has a GoFundMe fundraising account to help buy clothes for their children who lost everything in the explosion.