OAKLAND (KRON)—Some Oakland residents are calling one of their own a hero Tuesday after he and another man saved a disabled woman from that house.
Dorothy Oakley and Deshawn Holcomb hadn’t met before Monday night. It was around 10:30 p.m. when neighborhood fireworks set a tree in her front yard on fire.
Flames started lashing at the roof, and heat began cracking the living room windows.
As smoke began filling the house, Oakley sat at the bedside of her 59-year-old disabled daughter Dana who suffers from multiple sclerosis.
“I wasn’t going out of the house unless I got her out, so we probably both would have been trapped,” Oakley said.
Deshawn Holcomb and his family live around the corner. When they saw the flames, they came over to the house.
Holcomb went into the burning home when he heard there were two people inside.
“I did think that I might not walk out of here,” Holcomb said. “I honestly did think that as soon as I stepped downstairs. It was almost like slow motion. I saw an ambulance floating and what not, and I realized I might possibly not walk out of here even standing in the back just thinking about the flames in the front getting trapped. I was just like hey if it’s my time, it’s my time. Right now, we just need to do what we can to try to get this lady out of here, and that’s what we did.
Holcomb and another neighbor carried Oakley’s daughter Dana out a back door and onto the street to safety.
“This young man is a stand-up man, and I understand he has asthma problems,” Oakley said. “His mother raised a man to not think of himself, but just save someone else.”
On Tuesday, Holcomb brought his family over to meet Oakley.
The heroism of this father of four has not been lost on his kids or his godson Issac Walker.
“From now on, I’m going to help people who need help, and not be selfish and think of myself,” Walker said.