“If it wasn’t for him yelling for me, we definitely would not be here.”
A heartbroken mum has spoken about how her toddler saved her and her daughter’s lives before perishing in a fire at their home.
Whitney Johnson lost her son in a blaze that started after she, two-year-old DJ and her five-week-old daughter Nyla had all fallen asleep on the couch together one evening.
The fire started when an electrical fault in a storage heater caused it to explode.
The smoke detector in their apartment in Frankfort, Kentucky, failed but DJ woke up and began shouting for his mum.
He managed to wake her and she moved to get them all outside but the little boy got a fright and took off back into the fire.
“When I woke up, all I remember is flames everywhere and pitch black smoke. It was like something out of the movies,” she told The Mirror.
“We ran through fire and I guess that scared DJ. I remember looking back and thinking, ‘This is it, we are all going to die.’
“I had my newborn in one arm and I tried to open the front door and had to let go of my son’s arm to do that.
“He ran directly to his room and shut his door. He was coughing and yelling for me and I was trying to look for him but couldn’t see him through the black smoke and flames.
Still carrying the baby in her arms, she realised she wouldn’t be able to find her son.
“I looked at my daughter and her scalp was melting and that forced me out. I was able to open the door and got everyone out of the entire building.
“At that point getting my son out was all that was on my mind. I tried to run back into the apartment but it was in flames.”
Whitney and Nyla were both severely burned and spent several months in hospital recovering. DJ didn’t make it.
Two and a half years on from the accident, in November 2015, Whitney said that she gets blamed on social media for her son’s death.
“That really bothers me because I am angry at myself for not saving DJ.
“I’m supposed to be his protector and I wasn’t able to be there.”
She’s now urging other parents to have an emergency fire plan in place for their families.
