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The
twister sheared roofs and walls from many buildings, flipped
over vehicles and downed trees and power lines, officials said.
A blast of extreme spring weather swept much of the United
States on Friday, menacing the nation's midsection from Texas to
the Great Lakes with thunderstorms and tornados.
In northern Illinois, one person was killed and 28 injured when
extreme weather tore the roof off a theater in during a heavy
metal concert.
The two Arkansas fatalities occurred in Wynne, about 100 miles
(160 km) east of Little Rock, Governor Sarah Huckabee Sanders
said on Friday night.
Although more than 30 people were taken to hospital in the
Little Rock area, none had died as of Friday night, Little Rock
Mayor Frank Scott Jr. said, adding that the count remained
imprecise.
"It is truly by the grace of God that we have not experienced
any fatalities to date," Scott told a news conference.
One of several areas to get battered was a section of western
Little Rock that is home to 2,100 people, Assistant Police Chief
Andre Dyer said.
Two states away in Belvidere, Illinois, a riverside town near
the border with Wisconsin, one person died and 28 others were
rushed by ambulance to area hospitals, five of them with serious
injuries, Belvidere Fire Chief Shawn Schadle told reporters.
Schadle said about 260 people were attending the concert at the
city's Apollo Theater, which featured the headline act Morbid
Angel as part of the group's "Tour of Terror."
Concert-goer Gabrielle Lewellyn told WTVO television that people
took refuge in the basement when the roof came crashing down.
"They dragged someone out from the rubble. And I sat with him
and I held his hand and I said everything is going to be OK. I
didn't really know much else what to do," Lewellyn said.
The turbulent weather came one week after a swarm of
thunderstorms unleashed a deadly tornado that devastated the
Mississippi town of Rolling Fork, destroying many of the
community's 400 homes and killing 26 people.
(Reporting by Steve Gorman in Los Angeles and Daniel Trotta in
Carlsbad, Calif.; Additional reporting by Sharon Bernstein in
Sacramento, Calif., and Brendan O'Brien in Chicago; Editing by
Raju Gopalakrishnan)
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