Neighbors used a ladder to rescue a Northern Kentucky woman from a fire, News 5's Amy Wagner reported.
Tonia Tippitt had just awoken in her second-floor apartment at about 8 p.m. Monday when she noticed something was wrong.
"I smelled smoke, and I went downstairs, and the place was filled with thick smoke, and I couldn't even walk down the steps, so I walked back up," she said.
Her husband was at work, so Tippitt was in the apartment by herself.
"I was in the kitchen, and I yelled out the window for someone to help me," she said. "My neighbors came with a ladder."
Investigators said a mattress in the building's basement had caught fire.
Tippitt said there's been vandalism in her neighborhood recently, and said she wondered if someone had gone in through the unlocked basement door and started the blaze.
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