By Ryan Mills
The Naples Daily News
IMMOKALEE, Fla. — Lacking the proper equipment and training, law enforcement officers are taught not to run into fires.
But an Immokalee man is still alive because five Collier County sheriff’s deputies and at least one concerned citizen did just that Tuesday night, rushing into a burning Farm Worker Village home and pulling his limp body from the flames.
“What they did was very dangerous,” said Lt. Mike Dolan, who oversees the Sheriff’s Office’s Immokalee district.
Around 6:45 p.m., the Sheriff’s Office received a call of a fire at the home of 75-year-old Simone Marie Pierre, at 1967 Alexander Circle. Neighbors say Pierre had just returned home from Haiti, and was meeting with her friend, Nicolas Desilus, 57, who had been watching her home while she was gone.
“The first thing we heard was people screaming, yelling and hollering out,” said Theresa Bair, 51, who lives nearby.
When Cpl. Hal Hodes, 53, arrived on scene, smoke was billowing from the windows of the four-unit brick apartment building, the Sheriff’s Office reported. Hodes, a veteran deputy and former Navy diver, raced to the open front door, and could see flames shooting from a mattress wedged in a doorway to a bedroom.
A woman in the gathering crowd pointed to a bedroom window and told him someone might be inside, reports said. Hodes shined his flashlight in and saw Desilus’ legs.
“The fire was at a stage where the top half of the room was black smoke,” Dolan said.
Hodes took a deep breath, rushed into the apartment, over the burning mattress and into the bedroom where he found Desilus unconscious on the floor, the Sheriff’s Office reported. While neighbors threw buckets of water through the window and onto the burning mattress, Cedieu Paulissaint, 43, entered the apartment and helped Hodes attempt to pull Desilus from the fire.
Bair said another neighbor, Princesse Biennevile, 50, also went in to help, although his name did not appear in any Sheriff’s Office reports.
At that point, Deputies Carlo Llorca, Thomas Folden, Lazarito Santos and Travis Radford arrived at the fire, noticed Hodes was having difficulty getting Desilus out, and entered the apartment to help, reports said. Together they carried Desilus from the building.
Llorca, Folden and Santos ran back inside to ensure there was no one else trapped inside.
“There’s a fine line between being a hero and being a victim,” Dolan said of their efforts.
Normally a calm man, Desilus was in pain and was thrashing on the ground with burns on his arms, face, neck and back, Bair said.
“He was burned so bad, you couldn’t even tell who he was,” Bair said. “His black skin was all pulled off. His teeth were totally black from smoke.”
Desilus was transported to Lee Memorial Hospital via air ambulance, and then transferred to a Tampa burn unit. A hospital official said he was in critical condition Wednesday afternoon.
A father of three, Desilus has been a case worker at Guadalupe Social Services in Immokalee since 1984, Director Ninfa Drago said.
“He is a mission-driven employee,” Drago said. “He always helped people before helping himself.”
Hodes was treated for smoke inhalation and a minor burn to his forearm, and released from a local hospital.
Immokalee firefighters arrived on the scene and had the fire out in about 10 minutes, officials said. Immokalee Fire Marshal Leo Rodgers said the cause of the fire appeared to be electrical.
“The electrical receptacle shorted out, and the bed was up against it,” Rodgers said. “When it shorted out, it ignited the mattress.”
Hodes, Llorca, Folden, Santos and Radford will be nominated for the Sheriff’s Office’s lifesaving award. Paulissaint will be nominated for a similar award for civilians, the Sheriff’s Office reported.
“It was a team effort,” Dolan said, “and it was a team of heroes in my eyes, including the citizen.”
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