April 22--An off-duty St. Louis firefighter was in the right place at the right time Friday, teaming with a nearby resident to save an elderly woman from a burning home.
KSDK-TV reports that Capt. Leon Whitener had just gotten off shift and was driving in his work vehicle when he heard an alarming scanner call and realized he was in the area.
"I heard the radio transmission for a fire in a house with a person trapped," Whitener told KSDK-TV. "When I got there, there were people outside. I asked them if someone was still inside and they said yes."
Without hesitation and being the only person on scene, Whitener ran into the burning building - but he wasn't alone. Nearby resident Raymond Rayford, who said he was woken up by the commotion outside, quickly followed Whitener inside the burning home to help.
"I just got done working a 12 hour shift," Rayford explained to KSDK-TV. "I woke up. I heard hysterical screaming. A woman was yelling fire!
"(Whitener) was the first guy I saw. The first one. He ran in there. I ran right behind him. It was just instinct. Just instinct."
When the two men got inside, they found the woman trapped in her wheelchair on the second floor and unable to escape. They lifted her over the banister and down to safety, and later said she was going to be okay.
"To have a citizen put his life at risk to help a person he doesn’t know, it's golden. It’s a beautiful thing to see people care about other people,” Whitener said.
Rayford said he didn't act to be a hero. He simply wanted to help.
"It's a lady in a wheelchair. If you skip out on that, you don't have a heart," he said.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
