Tree Falls on Hall County Home, Killing Man Inside – WGAU

HALL COUNTY, Ga. – A large tree fell on a mobile home in Hall County, killing a man who was sleeping inside.

It happened around 4:45 a.m. Wednesday at a mobile home park on Athens Highway southeast of Gainesville.

Henry Geovanny Mendez Aguilar, 20, was in bed when the tree crashed into the house, destroying half of it.

Sara Perry, who lives next door, was woken up 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 screaming for help,” she said. “It was really traumatic to hear someone screaming for help like that.”

That man was Aguilar's uncle, Eric Mendez.

Neighbor Sendi Galvan was run over with her flashlight. “

And he told me, 'I think he's under the tree,'” she said. “And then he said to me, 'Help me move the tree,' and I said I can't, I can't. It was so bad.”

On Thursday he returned to his destroyed home, rummaged through the rubble and tried to salvage any items of clothing.

He said Aguilar moved here from Guatemala in June and came to the U.S. on a work visa for a landscaping job.

Mendez said he stayed in the mobile home despite the destruction because he had nowhere else to go.

An American Red Cross representative said she would contact the local office to help Mendez with shelter and clothing.

Mendez has abrasions on his stomach and leg from the falling tree.

It's unclear what caused the tree to fall, but neighbors wonder if saturated ground from last week's storm made the tree unstable.

They fear that more trees could fall.

“I’m traumatized,” Perry said. “I didn't want to go to sleep last night. I was afraid it might hit my house or it might happen again. I’m very, very traumatized by this.”