A retired Marine veteran is being hailed a “hero” after he died while rescuing his family from their burning house in Ohio, early Tuesday morning.
Horace Oates Jr. — a retired Marine vet with honorable discharge — used his military training to rescue his family before the flames completely engulfed their Toledo, Ohio, home just before 3 a.m. Tuesday, his stepdaughter Breonna Blackwell said.
“I feel like he died doing what he learned,” Blackwell told WTVG.
There were nine people inside the home when the fire first started — including a three-month-old baby, according to Blackwell.
“My mom told me that he grabbed her, the baby, and his second oldest and pushed them all down the stairs,” Blackwell said.
Oates Jr. heroically evacuated his family out of the house in the early hours of the morning, but tragically was the only one not to make it out of the house before it was engulfed in flames.
“There’s no telling what would have transpired without them being here,” Blackwell said, praising her late stepfather.
The family’s house and Oates Jr.’s wife’s car are completely destroyed. Their animals also died in the blaze, the GoFundMe set up by Blackwell said.
Investigators spoke to witnesses and reviewed surveillance footage and determined the inferno was the result of arson.
A family friend, Cory Allen, 44, was identified as the arsonist and charged with murder, online court records show. The motive for starting the blaze was unclear.
Residents said they saw Allen walking around the neighborhood as firefighters battled the blaze.
“He stayed around here after the house caught fire, he was walking around the block. He was over here. People seen him, I seen, I didn’t know he started it,” Blackwell said.
Allen — who has an extensive rap sheet of priors including assault, public indecency, domestic violence and strangulation — is being held on $9 million bond at the Toledo Municipal Court, according to online court records.
He is set to return to court on April 13.
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