The last Friday in July started like just any other day on the job for Tuscaloosa’s André Harris.
Harris, a tow truck driver for Bambarger Wrecker Service, was finishing up a job that night when he spotted smoke billowing out of a car half a football field down the hill from him.
When he arrived at the scene, Harris saw a woman screaming on the roadside next to the burning car.
She said her baby, seven-month-old Demarcus Richardson, was trapped inside.
“I was screaming, I was asking him to please get my baby out of the car,” the mother, Alexus Jenkins, told The Tuscaloosa News.
In what Harris describes as a blur, he sprang into action.
“Next thing I knew, I was … trying to bust the glass with my hand,” Harris said about the vehicle fully engulfed in flames.
“When I reached into the car, I had to feel around because I couldn’t see due to the smoke in the car and the darkness,” he told CBS 42. “I felt a tiny little leg and I started pulling and the next thing you know, I got to the top of the hill with the baby and I looked back at the car.”
Because of Harris, the baby only suffered a few scrapes and cuts from the accident. Jenkins says if it was not for Harris, her child would have died.
“I am just grateful to God that he was out there,” Jenkins told CBS 42, after thanking Harris. “Because I don’t see any other way my baby would have gotten out of the car.”
Harris is being called a hero, but he says he doesn’t consider himself to be one.
“It wasn’t until the adrenaline wore off that I’d realized what happened,” Harris said, per The Tuscaloosa News.
He added, “Heroes are the ones who make it possible for us to do this interview here safely. The soldiers who go off to fight. I just did what any other American would have done, especially somebody who has kids themselves.”
“It was all God’s timing,” Harris emphasized. “I thank God for allowing me to be in that position and not allowing me time to think — to just jump on it.”
Harris also works for the City of Tuscaloosa’s water department. He grew up as the second youngest in a nine-children family and now has two teenage sons of his own.
“We were always the people who would take care of everyone else before ourselves,” Harris explained to The Tuscaloosa News. “After a while of doing the same thing, it becomes who you are. If we’re put in a position to be a blessing to someone, I think we should take the opportunity.”
Sean Ross is a staff writer for Yellowhammer News. You can follow him on Twitter @sean_yhn
