Armenian teen, friends rescue elderly woman from burning house in CA

PanARMENIAN.Net - A trio teens in San Francisco Bay Area, California are being hailed as heroes after rescuing a 94-year-old woman from a burning home, NBC Bay Area reports.

The senior students at California High School in San Ramon were skipping class at about 10 am earlier this week to get something to eat when they saw smoke. The teens ended up on Broadmoor Drive, where smoke was billowing from the back of a house.

When Garen Kissoyan and his friends, Peter Kravariotis and Kirill Yantikov, drove up, they saw Dianna Davis, one of the residents, in the garage calling for help.

"I was turning on the hose, she was on the phone with 911," Kissoyan said. "We asked the lady if anyone was in the house at the time — she didn't respond."

Davis eventually told the teens her elderly mother was inside.

"We both had the same instinct," Kravariotis said. "Just go in the house, so we did."

The teens ran into the fire and smoke, and discovered an elderly woman sitting in a chair. The woman was suffering from burns and covered in soot.

"When we picked up the chair and we grabbed the dog," Kravariotis said, "the only thing she said to us was 'I'm on fire,' and it was kind of shocking to me to hear that."

Bob Smith, who lives across the street, had already been inside. He said his age and heavy smoke pushed him right back out.

"The elderly lady, she would have been gone a minute and a half more," Smith said. "I don't think she could have survived. I went in there and couldn't see my hand in front of my face. It was that bad."

Firefighters eventually arrived on scene and extinguished the two-alarm blaze. Investigators are working to determine the cause of the fire.

The elderly woman was taken to a burn center in San Francisco, where she remains in critical condition.