By Associated Press
ONEONTA, N.Y. — A former firefighter died after rescuing his fiancee and four young boys from the man’s burning apartment in upstate New York, fire officials and the victims’ relatives said.
Family members said the boys, three of whom were 38-year-old ex-firefighter John Heller’s nephews, were spending the night at Heller’s apartment building in Oneonta when the fire broke out around 4:20 a.m. Saturday.
Relatives have posted online that Heller got his fiancee and all the boys out of his burning third-floor apartment but didn’t make it out himself. Oneonta Fire Chief Patrick Pidgeon confirmed Heller’s death Monday but said no cause had been determined.
One of the boys suffered burns on his arm, according to Erika Heller, John Heller’s sister-in-law and mother of three of the boys.
“He died because he did everything he could to make sure that his fiancee and my sons were out of the home safely,” Erika Heller said in a Facebook post. Her sons and John’s fiancee, she said, were “completely trapped” on the building’s top floor.
https://www.facebook.com/wktv2/posts/10156302047533264
“John Heller has passed because he was saving my children and the love of his life,” she wrote.
Heller was a part-time Oneonta firefighter from October 2003 to August 2009, according to Pidgeon. The cause of the fire was still being investigated Monday, the fire chief said.
The family has established a GoFundMe account for Heller’s nephews, who survived the fire.