SALEM, NH (WHDH) — An officer and a neighbor rushed into a burning house and rescued a man before firefighters even got there.
“I saw the fire and ran across the street and my wife called 911,” said Nick Alsup.
He is a former Marine and so is the 84-year-old man who lives across the street with his wife. When Alsup smelled smoke at three in the morning, he knew the elderly couple was inside.
“It was bad over here. It looked bad from the outside,” said Alsup
He banged on the front door to try and wake up his neighbors and when that didn’t work, he ran to the side of the house where he tried to knock the AC out. That didn’t work either, so he went to the back of the house. He was going to break in through the back door when the woman inside finally woke up. She got right out but her husband was still trapped inside when Officer Connor Nolan got there.
“At that time we saw her husband at the top of the stairs in a wheelchair. Couldn’t walk, couldn’t really hear, he’s deaf,” said Nolan.
Nolan and Alsup didn’t wait for back up. They went right in there to get him.
“I grabbed his right side, Nick grabbed his left and we carried him down the stairs,” said Nolan.
The couple remains hospitalized and the cause of the fire is still under investigation.