Adorable 5-year-old girl credited with saving family from fire
Does she think she's a hero? 'I don't know,' Ontia Randoulph says
An adorably unflappable 5-year-old girl is being hailed as a hero for alerting her family to a fire before it ripped through their Kentucky home, allowing her mother and three sisters to escape.
Jessica Randoulph was in a back bedroom of their Radcliffe, Ky., home getting ready for work on Wednesday afternoon when her daughter, Ontia, burst into the room.
"I saw a fire and then I told her she had a fire," Ontia told WLKY-TV. "And we had to run out of the house."
Randoulph's husband, Denoah, was at work at the time of the fire. Jessica Randoulph, Ontia and her other daughters — 8-year-old Tiffany, 3-year-old Amelia and 8-month-old Dajah — were able flee the home unharmed before it was in engulfed flames, destroying virtually everything they owned.
"All of our toys and our new books and our new tablets are in there," Ontia said. "And our new pillows and our new Elsa blankets."
Firefighters tried to extinguish the blaze, but high winds prevented them from saving the home. The cause of the fire is under investigation, officials said.
"They all got out alive with the clothes they had on their back. That's it," Anita Newby, Ontia's grandmother, said.
The Red Cross, which is assisting the family, is accepting clothing donations through its local Elizabethtown chapter.
As for Ontia, she's not so sure she's ready for the "hero" label. When asked by a WLKY reporter if she thinks she's a "hero," Ontia merely shrugged.
"I don't know," she said.
