College students save man trapped in apartment fire
By Grace Monk
Click here for updates on this story
LA CROSSE, Wisconsin (WKBT) — Two college students helped rescue a tenant from an apartment fire on Saturday.
UWL student Kaiden Brenneman-Sorenson and UW-Eau Claire student Charles Mroz were sitting in his apartment when they noticed smoke coming from a building on Zeisler St.
But as they got closer to the building, their curiosity quickly turned into a rescue mission.
“That’s when we kind of realized like, oh my gosh, it’s an actual fire. And then when we approached it is when we realized how big it actually was becoming,” said Mroz.
The students began knocking on doors and attempting to activate fire alarms to alert residents.
“The smoke really started to build up, and the fire started to expand,” Brenneman-Sorenson.”We all kind of started to back up because it really caught a blaze and some lady said there’s a dude in the bottom window,” Mroz said.
When they heard about the trapped resident, Mroz and Brenneman-Sorenson ran toward the window and instructed the man to try exiting through a nearby door.
Brenneman-Sorenson says the fire had already reached the door, forcing them to come to up with a new plan.
“That was when me and [Mroz] knew we had to bust open the screen and pull him out.”
The students broke open the window screen, and with help from two additional community members who rushed over, they successfully pulled the man to safety through the window.
“I was kind of just in shock that about everything that happened,” said Mroz. “But also proud of myself, too. Proud of everybody else that stepped up too.”
Please note: This story was provided to CNN Wire by an affiliate and does not contain original CNN reporting. This content carries a strict local market embargo. If you share the same market as the contributor of this article, you may not use it on any platform.