An unidentified man is being praised as a hero after he woke a sleeping Las Vegas family, helped them get out as a predawn house fire spread and then vanished before anyone could ask his name.
The family is now trying to find the stranger who, they say, hammered on their front door, shouted “Fire!” and grabbed a garden hose to fight the flames before slipping away. They hope to thank the man they believe saved their lives — and possibly the lives of nearby neighbors.
The blaze erupted shortly before 5 a.m. on July 5 at the family’s home in the Las Vegas Valley.
Home security footage provided to Fox News Digital shows flames taking over the backyard as the fire continued to spread.
Homeowner Danna Shabtai told Fox News Digital she had gone to sleep after asking children across the street to stop lighting fireworks near her house on the night of July 4.
Just hours later, at 4:51 a.m., she was jolted awake by someone repeatedly ringing the doorbell and pounding urgently on the front door.
“My dog started barking, so I woke up and I stumbled to the door,” Shabtai said. “I opened the door and the gentleman was yelling, ‘Fire! Fire!’”
“He pointed toward the back of the house, and I turned around and I could see the French doors to the backyard. I just saw orange — like a wall of orange.”
After realizing the fire was far more serious than she initially thought, Shabtai said her sister grabbed the family’s garden hose and rushed outside to fight the flames while she scooped up her 14-month-old son and ran next door to wake her neighbors.
“I started banging on their windows and their door trying to make noise, like, ‘Wake up! Wake up!’” Shabtai said.
She said two women joined her in pounding on the neighbors’ door until everyone inside made it out safely.
Meanwhile, the stranger grabbed a hose from the neighboring home and tried to keep the flames from spreading.
“He went to those neighbors’ house and grabbed their hose from the front yard, and he was trying to put out their fire,” Shabtai said. “So not only did he wake us up, he was trying to put out the fire with my sister.”
Shabtai believes the man’s actions prevented an even greater tragedy.
“If he wasn’t driving by at that time, I don’t know. It would have been a lot worse before we would have even noticed or woken up that there was a fire,” she said.
The family has since taken to social media in hopes of identifying the mystery man so they can thank him in person.
“You’re an angel. You saved our lives, and I’m really thankful for everything that you did,” Shabtai previously told Fox 5 Las Vegas. “You didn’t have to stop. You could have driven by and said, probably someone already called it in. But no, you took the time, and you woke us up, and you’re a hero.”
Speaking directly to the mystery man, Shabtai thanked him for stopping when others may have driven by.
“You saved probably two households and a bunch of pets because it would have been way too far gone before we would have realized,” she said. “You saved our lives. You’re a hero.”
Shabtai said she believes the fire began after children across the street continued setting off fireworks despite being asked to stop.
She said she heard debris landing on a neighbor’s gazebo and believes she saw a glowing ember drift over a roof toward the neighboring property before everyone went to bed.
She believes the ember may have smoldered for hours before igniting the fire, though officials have not determined an official cause.
In a Facebook post after the fire, Shabtai credited the unidentified passerby with saving multiple families and expressed frustration over what she believes caused the blaze.
“This is why you leave fireworks to the professionals,” she wrote. “This guy who just happened to drive by saved our lives and our neighbors’ lives. Next year I’ll be standing outside with my garden hose and hosing down any feral kids lighting up fireworks in my neighborhood.”
She later shared a video of the aftermath, writing that while her family was fortunate to remain in its home, others were not.
“Aftermath of fire. Neighbors are displaced now because of fireworks. Luckily we don’t have to leave,” she wrote.
