Boy saves sister

NBC News Channel
Published: August 26, 2008

An 8-year-old Kansas boy is being hailed as a hero after saving his little sister from a raging fire.

Michael Cowherd says he wasn’t scared of the flames he had to duck under, or the dense smoke.

All he could think about was his 4-year-old little sister Rebecca.

She was sleeping in her bedroom when their grandmother saw flames coming from the attic of the house.

The grandmother yelled for everyone to get out, but when they reached the back door little Rebecca wasn’t there.

“I heard my grandma yelling ‘Rebecca, Rebecca’ and I just said ‘I’ll go back inside and get her’ and she said ‘no’,“ Michael recalled.

Michael ran in anyway and grabbed his sister, then protected her from the flames with his body as he led her to safety.

“I don’t think she would have made it,“ said the children’s mother Elizabeth when asked what would have happened if Michael wouldn’t have ran back in for his daughter.

Elizabeth Cowherd was in Kansas City with family when Michael told her what had happened over the phone.

“I had to sit down and I was just, ‘Michael, that was extremely brave of you, I am very, very proud of what you did, very glad that you did it, but that was very dangerous’,“ she said.

Michael’s twin brother Dakota, meanwhile, made sure their other sister, who’s deaf and partly blind, didn’t go back inside the burning building.

The house is a total loss, and thieves looted sentimental jewelry from the ashes.

Still this family can’t help but count their blessings.