Last Sunday morning, Dallas resident Dennis Brown was driving his rental car through a suburban Dallas neighborhood when the car suddenly caught on fire. Brown, who is paralyzed below the waist and uses a wheelchair, wasn’t immediately able to get himself out of the burning car. Fortunately, Tammi Arrington of Mississippi was visiting a friend’s home and saw Brown’s car burning in the road in front of the house.
Arrington could also see that someone was still inside the burning car, so she ran out to the vehicle to try and help. She told Brown to get out of the car and he replies, “I can’t. I’m in a wheelchair.” So she pulls the wheelchair out of the car and then pulls Brown out, placing him in his wheelchair. The two moved a safe distance away from the car and soon the local fire department arrived and put the fire out.
In the commotion, Brown didn’t catch Arrington’s name or get a chance to properly thank her. After the story was aired on a local TV news, a friend of Arrington’s connected the good Samaritan with Brown. The next time that Arrington makes it back to Dallas, Brown plans on treating her and her friend to dinner. He says he owes his life to her, but Arrington insists that anyone “would have done the same thing” had they been in her position.