Christopher E. Williams saved Samuel L. Dust from burning, Gallipolis, Ohio, October 10, 2012. Samuel, 3, was asleep in the master bedroom at one end of his family’s mobile home after a fire broke out in the kitchen, at the opposite end. A neighbor, Williams, 35, saw smoke issuing from the structure and responded to it. He pounded on the mobile home’s front door and then ran to the back door and pounded on it, alerting Samuel’s mother, who also had been asleep. Hearing Samuel’s mother at the door, Williams pried it open and pulled her out. When he learned that Samuel remained inside, Williams entered the structure in search of him but was repulsed by smoke, which precluded visibility. On a second entry, he went through a hall and found Samuel in the doorway to the master bedroom. He picked Samuel up and carried him outside to safety. Believing a second child was in the home, Williams re-entered it repeatedly, making his way toward the fire, but he was repulsed by deteriorating conditions each time and then learned that everyone was out of the structure. Flames soon engulfed the mobile home, destroying it. Neither Williams nor Samuel was injured.
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