A 5-year-old Chicago boy is a local hero after saving more than 10 people from a house fire in the city’s Back of the Yards neighborhood last week. The fire started around 4 a.m. at a house in South Marshfield Avenue. According to first responders and witnesses, everyone in the home was asleep, except for 5-year-old Jayden Espinosa.
“I just walked in there and seen the flames in there in the kitchen,” he said. “It made my bones hurt.”
While other children would have frozen in fear, Espinosa was very calm and went to the second floor of the home and alerting everyone about the fire. “I wanted to go tell someone,” he said.
13 people were sleeping in the home when the fire started, and none suffered injuries and all thanks to Jayden’s heroic deeds.
“Without Jayden, I don’t think we would have survived,” Nicole Peeples, Jayden’s aunt, said. “He said ‘auntie, auntie, there’s a fire. We need to get out.’ I never smelled any smoke and the fire alarms never went off. I’m so glad he was there.”
Even Rambo, a 30-year-old pet turtle, made it out alive from the blaze thanks the 5 year old, who wants to be a firefighter when he grows up.
“What he did was courageous. I would hope that anyone would do the same thing,” Jayden’s father Kashmir Espinosa said.
The cause of the fire remains under investigation. Witnesses say the Red Cross is assisting those who were displaced by the fire.
