A Mississippi neighbor used his bare hands to search through smoldering wreckage and rescue a 4-year-old boy trapped inside a burning home, newly released police body-camera footage shows.
Kennard Hodge painstakingly dug through the debris to reach the child, who was the only one of six minors still inside the house, WAPT reported.
The boy was trapped in a bedroom as flames consumed the property in Edwards, a small town in Hinds County, on Oct. 7. He suffered burns in the fire.
Hodge was among several neighbors combing through the wreckage while firefighters worked to bring the raging blaze under control.
Wearing a yellow shirt, Hodge sifted through the rubble before finding the boy, grabbing his arm and pulling him to safety.
“You got him?” a first responder asked Hodge.
“Yeah, I got him, got him, got him!” Hodge replied.
Hodge later said he stepped in because he wanted to give the child a “chance” of surviving, describing the split-second decision that prompted him to enter the debris.
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The child was not breathing when he was pulled out. Responders performed CPR at the scene before rushing him to a hospital.
“Come on, little man … Hang in there, bud,” a responding police officer said in the body-camera video.
The Hinds County Sheriff’s Office said in an Oct. 8 update that the boy remained in “very critical condition.” No further information about his condition has been released.
“This, it was nothing short of a miracle,” Edwards Police Chief Terrence Crump said, praising the dramatic rescue.
Five other children, ranging in age from 2 to 13, were also rescued from the burning home.
Authorities said the cause of the fire remains under investigation, including the blaze’s origin and how it started.
Sheriff’s investigators “will be interviewing several individuals connected to the incident,” officials added.
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