HALL COUNTY, Ga. — A large tree toppled onto a mobile home in Hall County, killing a man who was asleep inside.
It happened around 4:45 a.m. Wednesday at a mobile home park along Athens Highway southeast of Gainesville.
Henry Geovanny Mendez Aguilar, 20, was lying in bed when the tree crashed into the home, demolishing half of it.
Sara Perry, who lives next door, was awakened by what she described as “a really loud bang.”
“It shook my whole trailer, it really did,” she said. “And my whole house went black.”
She heard a man screaming.
“And all you hear is him just scream for help,” she said. “It was really traumatic to hear someone scream for help like that.”
That man was Aguilar’s uncle, Eric Mendez.
Neighbor Sendi Galvan ran over with her flashlight. "
And he told me ‘I think he’s under the tree,’” she said. “And then he told me ‘Help me move the tree,’ and I said I can’t, I can’t. It was so bad.”
He came back to his shattered home Thursday, digging through the rubble and trying to salvage any clothing.
He said Aguilar moved here from Guatemala in June, coming to the U.S. on a work visa for a landscaping job.
Mendez said despite the destruction, he stayed overnight in the mobile home because he has nowhere else to go.
A American Red Cross representative said she would contact the local office to help Mendez with shelter and clothing.
Mendez has scrapes on his stomach and leg from the falling tree.
It’s unclear what caused the tree to topple, but neighbors wonder if the saturated soil from last week’s storm made the tree unstable.
They’re concerned that other trees might fall.
“I’m traumatized,” Perry said. “I did not want to go to sleep last night. I was scared it might hit my house, or it might happen again. I’m very, very traumatized from it.”
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