A Smyrna family is crediting a police officer for saving their lives after their home caught on fire on Sunday night.
According to the Tompkins family, a fire broke out in their home, but due to having no working smoke detectors, they didn't know about the fire until Officer Moss of the Smyrna Police Department started pounding on the doors and windows.
"He was being very aggressive, pounding on the spare bedroom windows, screaming, 'Your house is one fire, you have to get out now!'" Kim Tompkins said of the man she credits with saving her and her family's lives. "Police have taken a real bashing lately, and I really wanted to say that they're there for us even when we don't know that we need them."
Tompkins said an investigator told her that the fire started in the salon she runs out of her home. The investigator believes a hair dryer that was left plugged in caused an electrical fire, and that fire burned for hours before getting out of control.
"Soon as I come out the door, I was like, there was no way anyone could have survived this," Shirley Brafford, a neighbor, said of the magnitude of the fire. "It was just a constant, 'boom, boom, boom!' One right after another."
Those booms were due to the fact that the Tompkins family stored large fireworks inside of their garage.
The Tompkins family hopes that their loss will help others save their own homes by reminding homeowners and renters to replace their smoke detectors when the time changes going into and out of daylight savings time.
