Emergency services at the scene in Leicester where the search for victims continued this week. Photo / AP
Emergency services at the scene in Leicester where the search for victims continued this week. Photo / AP
A grocery store destroyed by a blast that killed five may have been the site of an illegal distillery, it was claimed yesterday.
One line of inquiry police are understood to be investigating is whether vodka or other spirits were being distilled illegally at the Leicester shop.
Officers were seen carrying evidence bags out of a property belonging to the shopkeeper, 33-year-old Aram Kurd.
Roz Rowett, who lives in Leicester, said on Facebook: "I've heard someone was making vodka and it exploded? Don't know how true it is though … RIP to all that have lost their lives."
The explosing and subsequent fire in Leicester on Sunday left five people dead. Photo / AP
Landlord Hardeep Singh, 45, said he had inspected the shop after it had been refitted by Kurd in December prior to his new business opening and said everything appeared to be in order – but he said he did not inspect the shop's basement, which was 'the size of the entire ground floor'.
Police would not comment on the claims, which came as they were granted more time to question three suspects.
Neighbours have told how Kurd, who also goes by the name Aram Alan on Facebook and is a keen bodybuilder, has not been seen since Tuesday.
The previous day, he had told reporters how he had a miracle escape from the collapsing building after the shop exploded while he was fetching beer from a rear storeroom on Sunday night.
Those living in the flat above – Mary Ragoobar, 46, who worked at the King Richard III Visitor Centre, and her sons Shane, 18, and Sean, 17 – are also believed to have died, along with Shane's girlfriend, Leah Reek, 18, from Melton Mowbray.
A neighbour of Kurd and his girlfriend Akvile Martinkute, 31, said the shopkeeper was last seen returning to his home in Braunstone on Tuesday night. He added: "He was gone again by the morning. On Wednesday a police car turned up outside his house at around 4pm and then his girlfriend turned up in his car later, not with him though.
"They [police] have been in and out with evidence bags.
"I didn't even know Aram owned the shop until a few days ago. I would always see him in coming back from the gym, so I thought he must be a personal trainer."
A police spokesman has said that the three men being held are from the East Midlands, East Anglia and the North West and are all in their 30s.
The home of Aram Kurd, the owner of the shop destroyed in a blast, is being searched by police.
Last night it also emerged that Ijevleva was due to stand trial alongside three other men in Norwich this June on a charge of defrauding UK customs, related to an allegation of tobacco smuggling.
A friend of the business management graduate said she had moved to the UK from Latvia with her mother and younger sister. It is understood she married in an Islamic ceremony around four years ago.
Kurd has appeared on television describing how he was chatting to her in the shop when the blast ripped through the store.
He said: "I was holding her iPhone at the time of the explosion as we had been watching YouTube videos.
"I don't know how it happened … I found myself up and then to the floor, for two or three minutes I couldn't feel anything."
"I managed to pull [myself] from the rubble and climbed into the neighbouring garden."
In 2011, five Lithuanian men were killed in an explosion at an illegal vodka distillery on an industrial estate in Boston, Lincolnshire. An inquest later heard the blast was probably caused by one of them lighting a cigarette.
