WAVY TV 10 - News, Weather, Traffic, Sports for Hampton Roads, Virginia - North Eastern North Carolina - 11 Year Old Girl saves family from fire that she played a part in causing
11-year-old KeKe Wilson says this to other kids,""Don't, don't mess with fire ever again."
Wilson speaks the truth even when it has cost her so much. Her Suffolk home on Lake Kennedy Drive went up in flames about 4:30 this morning. And the girl admits her actions ignited this accidental fire. Wilson says, "I was like had matches and I had lit the candles. I had two candles. I had lit 'em and that's, that's the cause of the fire."
But her mistake is the kind any grownup could have made and what she did after has more than made up for her slipup. Suffolk firefighters say Wilson told them she did light the candle hanging on a wall that was the source of the flames. Hours later in the motel where she and her grandmother are now living, Wilson further explains she thought she had extinguished the candle flame,"I thought I had blew the candle out I thought I had blewn the candle it, it wasn't, it wasn't out so."
Wilson says she fell asleep and then woke up to a fire burning her bed by her feet, "I just ran, I ran to my grandma's room and I said, I said to my grandmom, I said mom there's a fire, there's a fire, there's a fire in my bed."
Wilson's 60 year old grandmother, Dorothy Mae Cross, says, "So I jumped up ran and looked into her room and saw the fire at the foot of the bed started hollering calling my brother telling him the house is on fire and get up, get up, got to get up and get out."
Now Suffolk firefighters credit the girl for saving herself, her grandmother, and her 30 year old grand-uncle Tyrone Ralph-- who jumped out a window to escape after hearing Wilson's grandmother's warnings.
Suffolk Fire Captain Jim Judkins points out, "This could have been a very tragic story here today."
Cross adds, "I'm very proud of her cause my baby could have been gone. She could have got burned up... I thank God we're here, God woke her up to wake us up."
