A grandmother’s brave acts saved the life of her 5-year-old granddaughter from an apartment fire in Hampton, Georgia.
Jacqueline Roberts, according to local news accounts, leaped from the second-floor window to safety with her small grandchild.
According to 11Alive News, the incident occurred on March 27 shortly after 4 p.m. at an apartment along Nicole Drive. Family members woke Roberts up and informed her about the fire.
Her daughter, she explained, grabbed her grandson and granddaughter before walking down the 17 flights of stairs. Autumn, her granddaughter, raced back up the stairs, according to Roberts.
“It was so hot, and my daughter shout to me, ‘Mommy, get Autumn, get Autumn,’ ” she recalled.
Roberts explained that she had chosen to return upstairs to collect important papers such as her identification card. She was successful in finding her grandchild through the smoke.
“If I had gone downstairs with my daughter, my granddaughter would have been in the fire. She would have perished,” Roberts explained as tears came down her face.
“I saw her silhouette in my son’s doorway,” she recalled. “She said, ‘Grandma, get me, Grandma, get me, Grandma, don’t leave me. Save me.’”
The only way out, according to Roberts, was through a second-story window approximately 15 feet above the ground.
“By this time, the smoke is coming now,” she said. “It’s getting a little more dangerous. She’s coughing, I’m coughing.”
“I kind of bent over on my window to where the front of my stomach and my pelvic bone was over [the windowsill],” she said. “When I dropped her she said, ‘Ouch’ and then said, ‘I’m OK, Grandma.’ Then I said, ‘OK, you have to move now so Grandma can jump.’ “
Roberts expressed gratitude to the rain for making the grass muddy and soft for her to land on.
“I’m on the floor laying down, and one foot is going this way, and the other foot is going this way, and my body is one way,” she said.
The 52-year-old woman was taken to Grady Memorial Hospital after sustaining two fractured ankles and a few bruises. Her granddaughter was just injured a few times.
According to Roberts, fire officials and her landlord both told her that the cause of the fire was electrical.
“I just love my children and my first granddaughter,” she said. “I love my grandkids. The only option I had was to save her life. Not even mine, really. I wasn’t even thinking about myself, honestly.
It was to get her out because she was only five years old. I’m 52, I’ve lived life, and she didn’t start to experience life.”
Her family has set up a GoFundMe page to help pay for her medical bills after she was said to have lost everything in her apartment.
