Four police officers entered a burning home in Culpeper, Virginia, before firefighters arrived and rescued a man trapped in a locked bedroom, body-worn camera footage shows.
The incident happened at about 6pm on Saturday, 3 October, in the 1500 block of Old Fredericksburg Road. Officers arrived to find a two-storey house filled with heavy smoke and were told that a resident could still be inside.
One officer forced open a bedroom door after seeing smoke coming from beneath it. He then crawled through the smoke, first on his hands and knees and later on his chest, until he found the man unresponsive on a bed.
“Come on, brother, come with me! I’m trying to get him out; I have him; he’s breathing! Pull, pull,” the officer can be heard saying in the footage.
With help from three colleagues, he dragged the man from the bedroom and towards the upstairs hallway. Firefighters and paramedics arrived as the rescue was under way and took over the operation.
The resident was taken to hospital and later transferred to a regional burn centre for further treatment, according to the Culpeper Police Department.
Police said the officers were exposed to smoke and other hazardous conditions during the rescue. They were taken to hospital for smoke inhalation and other injuries, and were later reported to be doing well.
K9 handler Neal Coffey said he had never entered an active house fire before and described learning that the rescued man was alive and speaking as “a huge relief”.
Officer Ashley Sain said the officers acted instinctively in the emergency.
“You do what you have to do in the moment; afterwards, I think we all looked back and thought, wow, we really did that,” she said.
Culpeper Police Chief Chris Settle praised the officers for risking their lives to reach someone they had never met.
“That’s the way they’re wired, that’s why they took the oath, that’s why they’re police officers,” he said. “They’re wired to save lives no matter what the cost is.”
The department also thanked the firefighters, paramedics, dispatchers and other emergency personnel who arrived shortly afterwards and helped remove the man from the building before extinguishing the fire.
The circumstances surrounding the blaze remain under investigation by Culpeper police, with assistance from Virginia State Police arson investigators.
