Fire Transforms Neighbors Into Heroes

Here’s to the heroes in our own neighborhoods, next door or across the street. No one knows what he or she might do when called upon to risk life or limb to save someone during a fire or other emergency.

The recent efforts of several people deserve notice.

Fire officials say the needles of a dry Christmas tree fed the fire, which began in a ground-floor apartment in Fullerton. There, LaDawne Bonner was caring for her two children, 2-month-old Terrance Gray Jr. and 3-year-old Rishawn Jason, and Junior Tali, the 2-year-old son of a friend.

Bonner, 20, was able to help at least one of the toddlers out through a bedroom window. There was some confusion over whether Bonner or a neighbor, Ben Seyed, rescued the other toddler, also through the bedroom window.

But Bonner’s attempts to reach the living room, where Terrance was lying on the sofa, were unsuccessful because of the heat and the smoke.

When Seyed, who had reported the fire to officials, realized that the baby was still inside, he entered the burning apartment through a broken sliding glass door and crawled to the sofa, where he found the still-breathing baby.

The heat was so intense that the baby’s charred clothing had already fused with the fabric of the sofa. Neighbor Jeanna Craft then found her way to the sofa and used a small knife to cut the baby’s shirt away from the sofa.

Another neighbor, Alanis Anselmo, used an extinguisher to fight the blaze.

As it turned out, baby Terrance had received second- and third-degree burns and was too severely injured to survive. He died at UCI Medical Center the following morning.

But that does not detract from what all those involved tried to do.

Someone once described heroism as the extraordinary acts of ordinary people. That’s an apt description of this courageous group of neighbors who saw an opportunity to help and seized it.