11-Year-Old Survives Fire, Jumps from Second-Floor Window to Save Family

An 11-year-old boy survived a blaze and a jump from a second-floor window to save his family from an apartment fire.

Antonio Brown, 11, said he awoke to the smell of smoke.

So Brown immediately tried to hatch an escape plan to save his ten-year-old brother.

“I just woke him up, and I unlocked the door, and I told him to get out the house,” said Brown.

Brown said he went back into the burning apartment to see if he could save his father. But when it came time for him to leave, Brown said the door was too hot to touch.

“I went back and started punching and kicking the window, and then I jumped out of the window,” he said.

Broken shards of glass injured Brown enough that he had to get stitches and he suffered burns on both of his ears, but Brown was preoccupied with other things, such as rescuing his dog from the fire.

He could not go back for the dog because “it was too hot” inside the building.

Brown’s heroic actions surprised his mother.

“I just didn’t think that an 11-year-old would think like that. I just – it’s like he just took action,” said Tamika Brown-Ayers.

But after an initial wave of relief that everyone was safe, the reality set in that they lost everything they owned in the fire.

But it did not take long for the community support to come rolling in.

Family friend Brittany Townsend created a GoFundMe account for the family that had raised $3,505 as of Wednesday afternoon. Townsend said that one of the schools she and one of the Browns went to paid for the family’s hotel stay while they are displaced.

Reco Spencer said his employer plans to donate enough funds so the Brown family can celebrate Christmas the way they had planned before the fire.

The outpouring of community support brought tears to Brown’s mother’s eyes.

Brown is not the only kid to save his family from a fire. A six-year-old named Denali Duval received an award from the New Hampshire fire marshal’s office for saving his family and his neighbors from a fire in September.