ARCADIA, Fla. — Two Arcadia police officers put their lives on the line to rescue a woman from a burning home. It happened Wednesday, July 19, on Harris Road.
Warren Cooper was one of the first to the scene.
“I was passing by, and I saw smoke coming from the back of the house, so I pulled up, and her daughter was at the door hollering, ‘Help my mother’,” Cooper recalled.
He said he went into the home to try to help. When he came out, Officer Steven Carroll was arriving at the scene.
“I told him, ‘Hey man, I need help, help’.”
Facing pitch-black darkness and heavy smoke, Carroll rushed inside. He said it was so dark he couldn’t see the woman’s brother who was trying to pull her out of the burning room. He had to follow the man’s voice until he reached them.
“I was able to locate her, pull her out a few feet, then I had to go out myself, get some more air, go back in, pull her back a little more,” Carroll recalled. “About that time Lt. Carrillo showed up.”
“Once I got inside,” Lt. Troy Carrillo said, “I couldn’t see him. I called out to him twice before I heard him say, ‘I’m here, I’m here’. So I just started going to where I could hear his voice.”
“And then the two of us together were able to get her all the way out of the house,” Carroll explained.
Once outside, the officers made sure the woman was breathing and got her medical care. She was eventually flown to Tampa General Hospital where she is currently in critical condition in the burn unit.
“That guy is pretty much a hero because I’m going to tell you what, she’s fighting for her life, but she wouldn’t be alive if he didn’t go,” DeSoto Fire Chief Chad Jorgensen said.
From the outside, you can’t see any evidence of the traumatic experience that happened inside. The only evidence is a small break in a bedroom window. Jorgensen said the view from the inside tells the true tale.
“The room itself is gutted, it’s black charred and there’s a hole in the ceiling from everything. There’s no doubt it was a good fire,” Jorgensen said.
The fire could have injured either officer who went in for help. Both were checked out at the hospital but are good to go now.
The ‘hero’ title Jorgensen and others are giving, they say isn’t necessary.
“I just happened to be the closest unit. Had I not been the closest unit, I would’ve been going in behind him or behind any of these guys. We don’t think twice about it, we just go,” Carroll explained. “Instinct man, that’s what we do.”
“I know everybody that works here would’ve done the same. It just so happens he was there first, and I got there second,” Carrillo added.