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WILMINGTON, DELAWARE (WTXF) - Family members say Archie Monroe made it out of his burning 37th Street home in Wilmington but went back inside when he thought his wife Donna didn't make it out.
Donna Monroe did manage to escape, though she suffered critical injuries with broken bones in her back after she jumped from the second story to safety. Her husband, unfortunately, never made it back out.
Jamar Warren captured on cell phone video the moments right after he saved his neighbor Donna from her burning home. She was then trapped on the second floor with flames shooting all around her.
"I'm like hold on, Just jump into my arms, jump into my arms, just jump to my chest," Warren told FOX 29.
Warren was watching TV about 11:30 p.m. Monday night,when he and his family heard the commotion outside.They looked out and realized their next door neighbor's house was on fire.
"Every window like down the side, every door was ablaze," he said.
The woman who lived there, on a second floor roof, was about to jump for her life.
"I had to do something, she like 70 years old jumping off roof. I can't let her jump straight to the ground."
Warren says they both fell to the ground, but he helped break the woman's fall and dragged her to safety. Little did this hero neighbor know the woman's husband had just gone back into the house to save his wife of some 30 years.
"If he'd just waited 30 seconds, he see her coming on the roof and me and him would both be catching her, instead of me catching her and him dying inside."
The Wilmington Department replaced the batteries in smoke detectors in Warren's house today as he tries to make sense of what happened.