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Dramatic video shows West Valley Police assisting in apartment fire rescue

Posted at 2:46 PM, Apr 01, 2019
and last updated 2019-04-02 08:38:00-04

WEST VALLEY CITY, Utah — A pair of police body camera videos shows West Valley City officers helping a man escape his 2nd-floor apartment during a fire early Monday morning.

The clips show one of the officers crashing a police cruiser through a fence in order to park next to the man's window, which allowed officers to stand on the hood and gain better access to the trapped man.

As you will see in the video, there are extraordinary and heroic actions on the part of several officers and a WVCPD supervisor," a news release from WVCPD said.

Officer Joshua Cook with West Valley Police was just finishing up a call. Sitting in a church parking lot, Officer Cook noticed an apartment complex across the street caught on fire.

Jumping into action, Officer Cook started knocking on doors to alert the residents.

“The plan was to make sure no one was inside, and that people could get out,” said Officer Cook.

But some were struggling to get out.

More West Valley City officers arrived on scene and Officer Cook rammed his car into the fence to pull up to an apartment engulfed, with people stuck inside.

The other officers climbed on top of Officer Cook’s car to help reach a couple trapped in their apartment.

Officer Oscar DeLeon is seen in body camera footage, calling for one resident to jump out the window.

“I was just trying to guide him on how to jump, but he was definitely an older male and couldn’t jump out,” said Officer DeLeon.

Eventually, the resident jumped out—rescued by the officers.

“Essentially, that’s why we do this job, that’s what we sign up for,” said Officer DeLeon.

Out of the 16 units evacuated, five were totally lost in the flames. Eight units sustained water and burn damage costing around $1 million.

Though they've never been trained to fight fires, because of the officers and their bravery, no one was seriously injured.

“We were not trying to be heroes or anything,” said Officer Cook. “We were just trying to help people that needed to be helped.”