Pizza Delivery Driver Awarded Carnegie Medal for Rescuing 5 Children from Fire: ‘This Kid Is the Real Deal’

An Indiana man who worked as a pizza delivery driver has been awarded a Carnegie Medal for rushing into a burning home to save five children inside.

Nicholas Bostic, 25, spotted a house fire while driving around noon on July 11 in Lafayette, Indiana, WTHR reported. After parking, he reportedly yelled to warn any occupants that the house was on fire.

He told the outlet that when did not hear a reply, he entered the home himself and discovered that four children were inside, leading the children to safety.

“I went in through the back door and the second step of the staircase is when I saw the faces coming out and they ran past me. I followed behind and then at the back porch I asked them if there was anyone left in the house,” Bostic said.

Upon learning another child, a six-year-old girl, had been left behind, Bostic “re-entered through the back door, ran up the stairs, and frantically searched the second-floor bedrooms as conditions deteriorated rapidly after an explosion on the porch,” a page from the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission website notes.

Despite the intense heat and heavy smoke, he was able to find the girl. The two made their escape through an upstairs window, which Bostic was able to shatter with his fist, per WHTR.

“We looked out the window and I went shoulders first through it and I landed on my right side with her on my left side,” he recalled.

The Carnegie Hero Fund noted Bostic was “hospitalized for three days and [was] initially in critical condition” due to the injuries he sustained while carrying out his courageous actions. 

These injuries included “smoke inhalation, first- and second-degree burns, and a complex laceration to his right forearm.”

A family member wrote in an update on a GoFundMe page set up to help Bostic with his medical expenses that he had been discharged from the hospital. The GoFundMe has raised over $640,000.

“This kid is the real deal,” the family member wrote in the page’s description.

The Carnegie Hero Fund Commision noted that the Carnegie medal “is awarded to civilians who risk death or serious physical injury to an extraordinary degree saving or attempting to save the lives of others.”