It was a very special moment at the start of Tuesday’s (May 16th) Danville City Council meeting when five police officers, four Danville and one Vermilion County, were honored for heroic efforts during the early morning darkness when a fire broke out in a building in the Vermilion Gardens apartments. Two officers had arrived to check on reports of a noise, and realized there was an active fire.
After calling for help, other officers joined in to form a human tower of top of an air conditioning register and passed Rebecca Dampier’s two children, Andrew Dampier and Alexandria Carter, down to safety. Rebecca then jumped and was caught by the officers.
Vermilion County Deputy Seth Moody received honors from Danville Police Chief Christopher Yates, along with Danville officers Jered Greer, Ayden Lamar, Scott Showers, and Damon Bellik.
Ironically, Rebecca’s father was a Chicago Firefighter for years, knew the movie Backdraft very well, and had passed some of that knowledge on to Rebecca. She heard something that sounded like knocking. And that reminded her.
Audio PlayerAUDIO: And in the Backdraft movie, this guy hears something that sounds like knocking. So he goes and goes to open it out of curiosity, and it was the last thing he ever sees. So for me, if I don’t see anything, and there’s nothing but blackness, I just knew not to open that door.
Eleven-year-old Andrew received a special certificate from Chief Yates for alerting the family. What he did was especially heroic, because he and his mom are hard of hearing. Andrew told Neuhoff Media it all began when he could smell the smoke.
Audio PlayerAUDIO: So I stayed calm like anybody would do. I went to my mom, told her what happened. I got my sister up super fast and carefully. I went to the window and looked for anybody who could help us to evacuate. Then a I the Danville Police Officers that were nearby, and then I asked them for help.
All the officers and the family received a standing ovation from a full council chambers at the end of the ceremony.
