Boy, 12, Saves Family From Fire That Spread Through Home in Middle of the Night

A quick-thinking 12-year-old boy is the savior of his family after saving them from a fire that ignited in their Missouri home, authorities said.

Darwin Wallace was asleep when a noise at his window woke him up just after midnight Thursday, he told KMOV-TV.

“I heard the fire, like the tree started hitting on my window and I woke up,” Wallace said. 

The boy jumped into action, making sure his extended family, also asleep in the north St. Louis county home, got out before the fire spread. No one was injured in the blaze. 

"I took my nephew, put him on my neck, and then I went to go get everybody else up," Wallace said.

Wallace’s mother told the television station she, her four children and her mother were hosting her niece and nephew at the time of the fire. Everything inside the home was destroyed by fire, smoke or water that put the blaze out.

Surveillance video from the home showed several people in front of the house with fireworks before the fire began. Officials were working to determine the cause of the blaze.

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