An Alabama tow truck driver is being hailed as a hero after he saved a seven month old child from a burning vehicle last month.
The incident happened on Friday, July 27, at the intersection of Highway 171 and Mount Olive Road, near Northport, Alabama, when 23 year old motorist Alexus Jenkins flipped her car upside down off of the roadway while trying to avoid a deer, according to Tuscaloosa News. The flipped car soon caught fire.
That’s when Bambarger Wrecker Service driver Andre Harris arrived on the scene to find Jenkins screaming outside the burning car with her seven-month old child, Demarcus Richardson, trapped inside with all of the doors stuck.
Harris says that he sprang into action, breaking out the car’s window with his fist to try to get to Demarcus: “When I reached into the car, I had to feel around because I couldn’t see due to the smoke in the car and the darkness. I felt a tiny little leg and I started pulling and the next thing you know, I got to the top of the hill with the baby and I looked back at the car and the compartment where the baby was engulfed in flames.”
Everyone came away from the incident with only cuts and scrapes.
Jenkins says that she believes that Harris’s quick action saved her child’s life: “I would tell him ‘thank you.’ I am just grateful to God that he was out there. Because I don’t see any other way my baby would have gotten out of the car.”
Harris says that he’s not a hero in spite of the fact that numerous members of the community have hailed him for the saving Demarcus’s life.