Citizen helps rescue child from fire in Miami.

On the evening of May 15, David Williams was in his mother's apartment when he heard screams coming from the street. A crowd of excited people had gathered, yelling and pointing to smoke pouring out from second-story windows of the building across the street. Among those in the crowd were a woman who was eight months' pregnant and her husband. "[The couple] said there were two kids in there," Williams told the Miami Herald.

Two girls were still in their room in the burning duplex. Their father ran up the stairs with Williams and unlocked the apartment door.

"When I first went in, I had to come out to take a breath," Williams told the Herald. He took off his T-shirt and used it to cover his mouth, to filter out some of the smoke.

The two men reached the girls' bedroom door, which was locked. "We had to kick the door in," he explained.

The father picked up the younger of the two girls and handed her to Williams, who took her outside while the father searched for his other daughter.

"I came out, unwrapped my shirt and laid her on the ground," Williams told reporters. "Her nose and mouth was covered in black stuff. I gave her mouth-to-mouth. She was breathing, but it was hard for her to breathe."

In the meantime, the girls' father, driven out of the apartment by the fire, tried to reenter it through a window. He was not successful, and Miami firefighters later found his daughter lying on the bedroom floor. According to Miami Fire-Rescue spokesman Ignatius Carroll, "[Firefighters] did perform CPR on the scene and all the way to the hospital, where they continued to try to revive her, but she was pronounced dead a short time later." Carroll also said: "We did find some stuff that leads us to believe [the fire] is suspicious in nature."

Concerning his part in the rescue of the surviving girl, Williams told the Herald: "I wouldn't say I'm a hero. I expect anyone to do that kind of deed, especially for children. That's why I did it, for the kids."