John Evans apparently timed the explosion and suicide with his daughter's ceremony.
A Pennsylvania father blew up his home on his daughter’s wedding day, taking his own life Saturday.
John Evans, 59, was at his home in Edgewood when daughter Lauren Evans and her fiance were being married in the afternoon in Pittsburgh. He was a no-show at the ceremony, and Lauren's uncle walked her down the aisle.
As the ceremony was underway, John blew up the family home just 1 mile away.
Police believe Evans disconnected the gas line.
“This gentleman apparently had some personal issues and we’ve had information from neighbors that would indicate that there’s a great potential here that he would have blown the house up,” Edgewood Police Chief Robert Payne told WTAE. “It looks like he may have been able to disconnect the gas line itself in the basement of the house and of course it wouldn’t take much but a spark to explode the house after that.”
John's body was found Saturday night in the rubble.
The mystery as to why he did it is baffling his stunned neighbors. “It's devastating,” Nicole Antolovich told Inside Edition. “They did say he didn't want nothing to do with the wedding.”
Antolovich lives down the block from the family and says she has known the Evans family her whole life.
As firefighters sifted through the rubble, the wedding reception went ahead as planned. The bride and groom looked happy in photographs. It remains unclear if the bride knew what happened to her father at the time.
“A lot of people say she didn't find out until later at the reception,” Antolovich said.
Cops found the dad's car parked down the street with notes to his family.
“I spoke to Lauren briefly on Sunday. I texted her, I wrote, 'I just hope everything is OK,'” Antolovich told Inside Edition. She added that the bride responded with, “We're holding up OK. Everything is really surreal.”
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