Categories: Inspiring

Heroic Young Man Risks Own Life To Save 8-Year-Old Niece From The Fire

He says he would do it all again just to make sure the little girl is safe.

A brave young man went out of his way to save his little niece when their house was engulfed in flames.
He was already safely out of the burning house but realized that his eight-year-old niece was too terrified to leave the bedroom.
Amazingly, he leapt into action and rushed back inside the raging inferno to get the little girl to safety.

Most children probably look up to celebrities as their own personal heroes. However, for eight-year-old Mercedes, her hero happens to be her own uncle. The heroic young man decided to run into a house engulfed in flames to save his niece and he would gladly do it again if he had to.

Derrick Byrd was already fast asleep when he was awakened by a loud boom and his sister’s screams. The 20-year-old from Aberdeen, Washington realized that the house was on fire and immediately looked for a way to save his sister and her children. Although Derrick was already out of the house, he realized that one of the children couldn’t jump down from the bedroom window. This is when he decided to rush back into the flames to get Mercedes out safely.

The house was already engulfed in flames when Derrick ran back inside to save Mercedes.

Derrick had run out of the burning house to catch the children who were ordered to jump from the bedroom window by their mother. He managed to catch six-year-old Junior and three-year-old Rory safely but Mercedes was too terrified to leap from the window. So he did what nobody expected: he ran back into the house to bring his niece to safety.

“I could feel it burning me,” Derrick said. “I got her and took my shirt off and put it around her face so she wouldn’t breathe in any smoke, and I just carried her out as fast as I could.”

The children managed to escape the burning house, thanks to their heroic uncle.

The ordeal left Derrick with second- and third-degree burns on his face, back, and arms. Although he was clearly in pain after everything he had gone through, he declared that he would do it again.