CHICAGO — A Christmas morning fire in the city’s Roseland neighborhood destroyed a garage and killed a man, but his body wasn’t found until Sunday after a fire official responded to pleas from a mother looking for her son.

Michelle Murry said that after days of searching and calls to officials, her son’s burned body was found in the fetal position in the rubble of the fire on the 9400 block of South LaSalle Street.

“I had called the fire department to ask them to help with some of the debris, because I felt my son was under the debris, and he was,” Murry told WGN on Monday.

Murry said her son, Wesley Freeman, was supposed to visit on Christmas but he neither showed up nor called. She learned about the fire the next from neighbors and said her calls to police and fire went nowhere.

“They told me no one was there. They put out the fire and no one was there,” she said.

In the days following Christmas, Murry called hospitals and filed a missing persons report, still with a strong sense that her son was in the garage where she said he’d been living for about six months.

Fire department spokesman Larry Langford told WGN that both the garage and its adjacent home were vacant. He confirmed that Freeman’s remains were found four days after the fire and expressed regret that he wasn’t discovered before the fire was put out.

“If you had checked in the beginning when you put out of the fire, perhaps he could’ve been here today,” the grieving mother said. “That’s the thing that bothers me the most, because I was constantly calling them and constantly (being told) no one was there.”

Freeman was Murry’s oldest son, and she said she’ll miss his laughter and kind heart. She wants justice, but said she hopes her son’s death will provide a lesson so that another family doesn’t have to endure the same heartache.

Fire officials said they’re deeply saddened by the tragedy and have launched an investigation into how Freeman was overlooked. Police said detectives are also investigating the incident.

The cause of the fire remains unknown.

Murry has established a GoFundMe account to help cover burial expenses.