Nov. 26--ST. LOUIS COUNTY --Two neighbors and a police officer helped rescue a disabled teen from a house fire early today in the Castle Point neighborhood of north St. Louis County.
The neighbors crawled through a first-floor window into the bedroom of the girl, who uses a wheelchair and cannot talk. As heavy smoke filled the house, they wrapped the girl in blankets and handed her out the window to a police officer who had just arrived outside.
The fire was reported at about 1 a.m. today at a home in the 10300 block of Edgefield Drive, just east of Halls Ferry Road. The teen had been trapped inside the home when an apparent electrical fire broke out, firefighters say.
A fire official with the Metro North Fire Protection District said the one-alarm fire appears to have started in a wall outlet in the living room. The fire official said a smoke alarm woke up the mother, identified as Tracy Collins. There wasn't much fire but plenty of smoke, which could have been deadly, the fire official said.
Collins was in the room, screaming for help, when neighbors Kendall Wilkes and his cousin burst in.
"The mama was hysterical because she couldn't move her daughter," said Wilkes, 38. "She was probably 150 pounds of dead weight."
After handing the teen to the officer, Wilkes and his cousin, Lamar Wilkes, 29, also helped the mother get out through the same window. No injuries were reported.
The daughter has epilepsy and, at the age of 4, suffered a massive seizure, said the girl's grandmother, Joyce Collins. "It left her immobile, unable to speak and walk," Joyce Collins said. Tracy Collins takes good care of her daughter and recently had a wheelchair ramp installed at the house, Joyce Collins added.
Kendall Wilkes lives across the street from the home that caught fire. He said his cousin Lamar Wilkes, who was staying in a house two houses away from him, had gone to help when he and his girlfriend heard the mother's screams. When Lamar Wilkes couldn't get the teen out, his girlfriend came banging on Kendall Wilkes' door, yelling "It's a fire."
"I ran and jumped through the window with Lamar," Kendall Wilkes said. "The window was so tall I don't know how I got in there that quick."
The window was in the girl's bedroom. Once inside, "we saw the smoke coming quick. It was getting thicker and thicker by the second," Kendall Wilkes said. The girl in her bed "can't talk but she's screaming and crying because she didn't know what was going on," he said.
"We wrapped her up in blankets real good because of the smoke," he said. "I thought she was going to be light. We kept trying to calm the mom down. She was right at the bed. She was hysterical."
The Wilkes cousins carried the teen to the window and were happy to see the officer. "By the grace of God, he was right there on time," Kendall Wilkes said. "He came out of nowhere and grabbed her. He's just as much a part of this as we were."
He didn't catch the name of the officer who helped, and a commander in the North County precinct was trying to determine which one of the many officers at the scene had carried the girl from the window.
Joyce Collins is grateful for the men who made the rescues.
"They're going to be fine," she said of her granddaughter and daughter.
Hours after the fire, Tracy Collins went back to her charred home with firefighters who led her through using a flashlight so she could pick up essentials, such as medication. She and her daughter will be staying with Joyce Collins until their home is repaired.
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