AIKEN, S.C. (WJBF) — A sanitation worker who lost his legs in an accident in Aiken County two years ago now faces a new battle after a housefire destroyed his home. “I start hearing pops. I kid you not, sound like gunshots pop bang pop,” Matthew Lex recalled.
The fire at Matthew’s home on Friday, June 6 spread fast. Windows shattered. What sounded like explosions followed. Inside—Matthew, an amputee, fighting to get out. “I threw my legs off,” he said. I took because my leg was half off. I threw this leg up and I bolted for the back door. The time I got out there, the battery exploded. It sounded like a train locomotive exploded.”
“He was here going down the hill,” neighbor Charlie Stokes Jr. said. “And we just basically told him he didn’t need to go any further, that we would get him, you know, where he needs to be as far as to safety and everything.”…