A quiet night at home quickly turned into a night of heroism for six friends who broke into a burning building and saved a 90-year-old man as flames engulfed his house.
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A quiet night at home quickly turned into a night of heroism for six friends who broke into a burning building and saved a 90-year-old man as flames engulfed his house.
The drama unfolded on Friday shortly after midnight, when two Rutgers-Camden students, Tammy Meneses and Vanessa Solis Palma, saw flames as they left the Camden apartment of four friends.
They called one of those friends, Sehwan "Ricky" Park, who ran toward the scene with roommates Corey Zytko and Jonathan Perez-Gaytan in tow. A fourth roommate, Matteo Resanovic, followed behind as soon as he could get his slippers on.
The two women called the police, while Zytko ran for the nearest campus safety officer. Resanovic said he and Perez-Gaytan circled the house on Cooper Street, searching for the source of flames and billowing smoke. They yelled and rattled fences, but no one came outside.
Six students rescued a 90-year-old man when his Cooper Street home caught fire early Friday morning. (Amanda Hoover | NJ Advance Media For NJ.com)Amanda Hoover | NJ Advance Media For NJ.com
"You always just assume that there's people in there," Resanovic, a 23-year-old studying mathematics, said in a phone interview Monday. "You always want to make sure people are all right."
So Resanovic broke the glass on the front door with his hand and jumped into the house.
The three other men followed him and began searching the crowded home. The smoke was contained mostly to the third floor, he said, making it easier to breathe as they ran through the second, eventually finding the 90-year-old man.
Together, they helped the man out of the house and onto a nearby bench. Resanovic took off his slippers and put them on the man's feet.
As emergency responders arrived to take over, they went back home.
"We were like, 'let's just go, everyone is taken care of.' We just wanted to go home," he said.
There, as adrenaline started to calm, reality set in.
"We looked over what just happened, like, 'whoa, did this really just happen?' "
A second resident, the 63-year-old son of the elder man, was found dead in the building by firefighters. He was on the third floor, where the fire began and heavier smoke had taken over, according to officials, who have not yet identified him.
As the dust settled Friday morning, everyone wanted to find the mystery heroes. Camden Fire Chief Michael Harper said he hoped he could thank the students "for not thinking of themselves, and for thinking of someone else. That was remarkable."
"We offer our condolences to the family of the man who died and we are heartened by the bravery of our students," Rutgers-Camden Chancellor Phoebe Haddon wrote in an email to the campus community Monday, in which she named the six students. "They are role models and displayed the very essence of civic-minded leadership that is embedded in what we do here at Rutgers University-Camden."
Resanovic said he was surprised, and overwhelmed, by the attention, as he had planned to stay anonymous and focus on upcoming exams. Aside from some scrapes on his hand and a cough that has since subsided, he said he and his friends weren't hurt.
He said he hasn't heard from the fire department or mayor's office yet. Requests for comment to both were not returned Monday afternoon.
To Resanovic, running toward -- not away from -- the flames was the obvious choice, he said.
"I kind of expect everyone to do this sort of thing," he said. "We were just the ones there."
Amanda Hoover can be reached at ahoover@njadvancemedia.com. Follow her on Twitter @amandahoovernj. Find NJ.com on Facebook.
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