'Stubborn' blind woman was refusing to leave her burning apartment — her neighbor's 'heroic' move saved her life

In a hazardous situation, a person might try to save their own life first. But a man was adamant about taking his blind neighbor with him as he got out of their burning building. The person, Socrate Joseph, didn't think it was right to leave the woman behind, as more than a dozen neighbors from his Boston apartment building were forced to come out on the streets. Even the Boston Fire Commissioner thanked the man for his brave act, per Boston 25 News.

"It was really smokey, like I pretty much had to crawl," Joseph recounted. The apartment building located in the corner of Tremont and Hammond streets in the Roxbury neighborhood caught fire and the residents were woken up at 3:30 AM on a Wednesday because of fire alarms and smoke. "Initially, it came in as a medical alert, but when companies got here, they saw the fire showing out the window, they struck the box and made an aggressive attack on the fire," Rayshawn Johnson, Boston Fire District Chief, revealed. Joseph lives on the third floor of the building and was coming down when he saw the woman on the second floor. "She was trying to come out, but she was hesitant, kept walking back and forth."

The elderly woman was stuck in that place as the condition worsened and Joseph knew that he had to get her out. "I ran back upstairs on the third floor and got my phone so I could use it as a flashlight, went back downstairs, looked for her, grabbed her hand, she was pulling back. Picked her up, put her over my shoulder, proceeded to go down the steps with her," the man explained. As he was going down the stairs, firefighters and first responders were coming up and he could leave the woman with them after that. "Companies were making their way up to the stairwell to attack the fire, they saw her up there and brought her down to the ambulance and EMS," Johnson pointed out.

She was rushed to the hospital after that to check for any injuries. The woman was doing fine and hadn't suffered any major injuries. "It was just the right thing to do, even though she was being hesitant," Joseph remarked. "But I just couldn’t leave her there. If I did not, it would be on my conscience. I don’t know her, but it was the right thing to do. She is a neighbor, I’ve seen her before, I know she’s an elderly lady, a handicap, I would want someone to do that for my grandmother." A total of 12 adults and 2 kids were displaced because of the fire and the Red Cross is helping them. The fire officials believe that the medical alert came from the woman's second-floor apartment, per WCVB Channel 5 Boston. The cause behind the fire is not yet known and is under investigation.

The neighbors were glad that everybody made it out of the building. Joseph shared that they were homeless right now and "just happy to be alive." Boston Fire Commissioner, Paul Burke, thanked Joseph through a statement on X from @BostonFire. He wrote, "Thank you to Socrate Joseph for rescuing his neighbor at today’s early morning fire on Tremont Street. His quick actions of carrying his neighbor to an exit and passing her to responding firefighters were heroic and undoubtedly saved her life in a rapidly progressing fire. As always, thank you to our firefighters for quickly extinguishing this fire at great personal risk, as they do every day they come to work."