One dead in Pinellas Park explosion

[KEN HELLE | Times] Watch video

An overnight explosion and fire killed one person and destroyed a small engine repair shop in Pinellas Park. A nearby house also was destroyed by the fire.

Identification of the body has not been determined.

Just before midnight Saturday, the Pinellas County Sheriff's Department received numerous reports of an explosion in the area of Park Boulevard and 66th Street.

Deputies and firefighters responded to find an engine repair shop, Rapid Roy's, had been nearly leveled by an explosion and fire. Firefighters found a body inside the building at 6798 Park Boulevard.

Those close to shop owner, Roy William Hubert, said they had no information about his welfare. His girlfriend of 12 years, Sherri Hoover, said she last spoke with him Saturday night.

One friend, Karen Weil, who came to the scene, said she spoke to Hubert about an hour before the explosion. He dropped by her home Saturday night to deliver a few items that she had purchased from him. She said he told her before that he decided to close his business because of recent litigation. But she said he did not seem upset Saturday.

"He was happy and everything," said Weil, who came to the scene. He spoke about fixing one her friend's motorcycles this week.

But in recent weeks she remembered him telling her, "You just don't know how bad I feel."

Thanks to her neighbors, 82-year-old Shirley Grace, who lived in a home next to the shop, escaped before her home was engulfed in fire.

Gene Lance heard an explosion last night and ran outside to see a "fireball" coming from Rapid Roy's. He and his wife, Norma, immediately ran to Grace's house.

"(Norma) hollered loudly and wouldn't take no for an answer," Grace said.

The Lances, who own several houses in the neighborhood, said they will let Grace stay in one of their homes as long as she needs to.

Virtually all of her possessions were destroyed.

"Her nightgown and her van," Lance said.  "That's all she's got to her name."

Grace said her greatest concern is the fate of her two cats, Stripes and Kurby.

"I hope they got out," Grace said. "If not, I hope they died really quickly."

Debris was scattered throughout several blocks, and windows were broken at some nearby businesses, deputies reported. 

Detectives from the Pinellas County Sheriff's office Homicide Unit, arson detectives and investigators from the State Fire Marshal’s Office combed the scene most of the morning

A man at the scene, Keith Macatee said Rapid Roy's owner Hubert told him on Friday that Saturday would be his last day of business.

-- Karen McAllister and Lorri Helfand, Times staff writers