A Las Vegas family is asking the public for help identifying a stranger who woke them during a predawn house fire, helped fight the flames, and vanished before anyone could learn his name.
The fire broke out shortly before 5 a.m. on July 5 at the family’s home in the Las Vegas Valley. Homeowner Danna Shabtai said she had gone to bed after asking children across the street to stop setting off fireworks near her home on the night of July 4. Hours later, she was jolted awake by the sound of someone ringing the doorbell and pounding on the front door.
«My dog started barking, so I woke up and I stumbled to the door,» Shabtai said. She opened the door and the stranger began yelling «Fire! Fire!» and pointed toward the back of the house. When she turned, she saw an orange glow through the French doors leading to the backyard. «I just saw orange — like a wall of orange.»
Once Shabtai realized the fire was more serious than she first thought, her sister grabbed the family’s garden hose and rushed outside to fight the flames while Shabtai scooped up her 14-month-old son and ran next door to alert neighbors. She began banging on windows and doors, shouting for everyone to wake up. Two women joined her in pounding on the neighbor’s door until everyone inside made it out safely.
Meanwhile, the stranger took a hose from the neighboring home’s front yard and joined the effort to keep the flames from spreading. «He went to those neighbors’ house and grabbed their hose from the front yard, and he was trying to put out their fire,» Shabtai said. «So not only did he wake us up, he was trying to put out the fire with my sister.»
Shabtai believes the passerby prevented a far worse outcome. «If he wasn’t driving by at that time, I don’t know. It would have been a lot worse before we would have even noticed or woken up that there was a fire,» she said.
The family took to social media in hopes of locating the man and thanking him in person. «You’re an angel. You saved our lives, and I’m really thankful for everything that you did,» Shabtai told a local TV station. «You didn’t have to stop. You could have driven by and said, probably someone already called it in. But no, you took the time, and you woke us up, and you’re a hero.»
Addressing the mystery man directly, she added: «You saved probably two households and a bunch of pets because it would have been way too far gone before we would have realized. You saved our lives. You’re a hero.»
Shabtai said she believes the fire started after children across the street continued setting off fireworks despite being asked to stop. She recalled hearing debris land on a neighbor’s gazebo and believed she saw a glowing ember drift over a roof toward the neighboring property before the household went to bed. In her view, that ember may have smoldered for hours before igniting the blaze, though authorities have not identified an official cause.
In a Facebook post after the fire, Shabtai credited the unidentified passerby with saving multiple families and voiced frustration over what she believes caused the blaze. «This is why you leave fireworks to the professionals,» she wrote. «This guy who just happened to drive by saved our lives and our neighbors’ lives. Next year I’ll be standing outside with my garden hose and hosing down any feral kids lighting up fireworks in my neighborhood.»
She later shared video of the aftermath, writing that while her family was fortunate to remain in its home, neighbors were not. «Aftermath of fire. Neighbors are displaced now because of fireworks. Luckily we don’t have to leave,» she wrote.
The North Las Vegas Fire Department, which was contacted for information about the fire’s cause, did not immediately respond.
