Security video captures hero stranger responding to Hilton Head house fire
A home security camera captured the heroic actions of a passing stranger who stopped to help after seeing a Hilton Head home on fire.
The home of Blake and Maddie Wearren, who own a vegetarian restaurant called delisheeyo on Hilton Head, caught fire on Dec. 21.
The couple and their eight month-old baby were not at their home on Marshland Road when the fire started. Neither was the Wearrens next-door neighbor, Tiffany VanBlaricum, who said she had just left her home to attend church.
Footage captured by VanBlaricum’s home security system shows a man driving by in a white Jeep who spotted the smoke and pulled into the neighborhood. The Jeep drives off-screen towards the burning home.
Minutes later, the stranger appears again as a Beaufort County Sheriff’s Office patrol car arrives on scene.
As an officer is heard banging on the door of the burning building, the stranger is shown in the video approaching VanBlaricum’s home and knocking on the door to check if anyone is home.
“Anyone here?” he can be heard saying in the video.
Shortly after, the stranger would help two deputies and a neighbor rescue the Wearrens’ pets from the back patio. Hilton Head Island Fire Recue arrived on scene and put out the fire, but not before it destroyed nearly everything the Wearrens owned. Earlier that same day, the Wearrens’ restaurant on Palmetto Bay Road was struck by a vehicle. The driver of the vehicle has been arrested and charged with driving under the influence and using a fake ID.
Rookie cop saves pets
In an interview with The Island Packet, Beaufort County deputy Adrian Elizondo-Leal revealed that he started working for the sheriff’s office last May, and that he is still in training.
When the fire broke out, Elizondo-Leal happened to be in the neighborhood.
He was typing up a report in his patrol car on Leg-O-Mutton road when a child on a bicycle got his attention.
“I look up, and that’s when I saw the smoke,” Elizondo-Leal said.
After arriving on the scene, Elizondo-Leal alerted dispatch and banged on the door of the home.
Hearing no response, he swung the door open and saw only pitch-black smoke.
“It was a surreal experience,” Elizondo-Leal said. “But in that moment, it’s like, you kind of have to do your job.”
Shortly after, Patrolman First Class Ben Lee arrived on the scene. Another individual, who police believe was an actual neighbor of the Wearrens, also came out to help.
Elizondo-Leal said he believes the man in the puffer jacket was the one who told him there were dogs trapped on the patio.
Thinking quickly, Lee climbed a support beam and pulled himself up onto the patio. Elizondo-Leal, meanwhile, spotted a ladder behind him and pulled it over to the patio.
As he scaled the ladder, he could hear a cat trapped inside the home “bellowing” at the sliding glass door of the patio. Lee opened the door and the cat scrambled away.
“I’m like, perfect, cat’s safe,” Elizondo-Leal said.
But there were still two terrified dogs to get to safety. One by one, Lee picked up the dogs and handed them to Elizondo-Leal, who handed them to a neighbor on the ground.
The stranger in the puffer jacket fashioned a makeshift leash out of an extension cord to secure the dogs until deputies were able to load the animals into the back of their patrol car.
Neighbors hope to thank stranger
The Wearren’s next-door neighbor, VanBlaricum, said she showed the security footage to others in the neighborhood. Nobody recognized the man shown in the video, she said.
She and the Wearrens hope to get a chance to meet the man and thank him personally for his heroic actions.
If the fire had not been put out in time, VanBlaricum noted, it could have easily spread to her home, where she takes care of several cats, raccoons, and other rescue animals that can’t be released into the wild.
