Body-camera footage from police officers in Mississippi has captured the moment a neighbor pulled a four-year-old boy from a burning house after digging through smoldering wreckage with his bare hands.
Kenard Hodge clawed through the hot debris and managed to drag the child out after he became trapped in a bedroom during the fire.
The blaze broke out on October 7 in the town of Edwards. Five other children, aged two to thirteen, escaped the house, but the four-year-old remained trapped inside his bedroom. Hodge joined the search effort, located the boy's arm beneath the debris, and pulled him free.
The child, who suffered severe burns and was not breathing, received CPR at the scene before being rushed to hospital in critical condition. In the footage, one of the officers can be heard encouraging him: "Come on, little man... hang in there."
"It was nothing short of a miracle," said Terrance Crump, the local police chief. Hodge explained that he acted quickly to give the boy a chance to survive. As of the latest update, no further information on the child's condition has been released. The cause of the fire remains under investigation.
