CLEVELAND — Cleveland firefighters battled a blaze at a house on West 32nd Street in Clark-Fulton on Monday, and three good Samaritans are being credited with saving a woman from inside.
"I heard somebody yelling from the street, 'Fire!'" Amanda Goddard, who was inside the wood frame home, said. "I smelled smoke, went out to the porch (on the second floor), everybody's yelling, 'Get out! Get out!'"
That person yelling was John Lester, but first, Said Daas was driving an Ohio Cares Transportation minivan with his patient Christopher Shannon inside. They saw the smoke, too, coming from multiple floors.
Daas ran into the burning home to help Amanda
"She said, 'Help me. I don't want to die. Please help me,'" Daas recalled.
He had followed Lester, who also could not make it past the smoke. They and Shannon were desperate save her, but did not know how.
"Once everybody came together, we ran down and just started trying to get her out," Shannon said. "But she was on the porch. She didn't know what to do."
Goodard admitted she had a hard time remembering what happened
"It was such a flash of everything," she told 3News. "I really don't remember anybody."
Shannon stood outside the burning home, talking to the stranded woman.
"We told her she had to jump," he said, "because the flames was (sic), like, taking over her house really quick."
Goddard was hanging over the railing on the front porch, the men begged her to jump. She did, right into the arms of Lester as the other two backed him up.
She's grateful the three men were there.
"Pretty amazing," she stated after it was all over.
Lester sat and watched as firefighters fought to save nearby homes. The reluctant hero says these guys do all the work and save lives everyday, not him, so why did he do it?
"I would want somebody to do it for me," he answered.
The same goes for Daas.
"When I am in Palestine (where I'm from), I see a lot of things like that," he said. "That's why I go inside the house and help people."
Also helping was Shannon, the patient who just had dialysis and is in kidney failure.
"I might be a little crazy, but I just needed to help," he declared. "You've got to look out for people."
Three other people lived in that duplex and all made out safely. A Cleveland firefighter received minor burns to his face and neck and was transported to MetroHealth Medical Center.
Goddard had three pets, two dogs and a cat. Unfortunately, only one dog made it out, while the other two animals perished in the fire.