AsdaAn Asda delivery driver has been hailed a hero after running into a house fire to save a newborn baby.
26-year-old Habeel Khan was making his way around his usual delivery route when he saw smoke coming from a house in Stapleford, Nottinghamshire.
After stopping his van to see what was happening, Khan saw a woman with two young children, who shouted to him her baby was still inside the house.
AsdaActing on ‘natural instinct’, Habeel immediately ran into the house with the woman, where they found the seven-week-old baby in the room next to the kitchen, where the fire had started, and safely carried it out of the burning building.
Habeel told Nottinghamshire Live:
It was a just a normal day at work for me. I was doing my deliveries in the Stapleford area and when I pulled up and looked over to where the customer’s house was I saw loads of smoke just gushing out of a house.
My natural instinct was to just run across to the house. I could see loads of smoke and lots of people panicking outside.
AsdaHabeel added:
I shouted ‘is everyone out of the house?’ and that’s when a woman with two young children shouted ‘my baby; my baby’s still in the house.’
I don’t think she had realised until then and then she ran back into the house and I went with her.
She managed to pick up the baby from a room next to the kitchen where the fire had started, then we ran out.
The 26-year-old then stayed with the family until firefighters and paramedics arrived, before he got back in his van and carried on with the rest of his deliveries.
Asda have since named Habeel their Colleagues’ Colleague of the Year at the Being Asda Awards 2019, for his quick thinking and brave actions.
AsdaHabeel said:
I didn’t really think anything of it – I just thought I’d helped out, and had done a little good deed.
I don’t think I have done anything heroic at all to be honest. Thankfully everyone was okay in the end and the family are back in the house.
Asda’s senior vice president of operations Anthony Hemmerdinger said:
What Habeel did was remarkable and it’s not something we would recommend that our colleagues do, however it’s clear that in this instance his instinct kicked in and he did a remarkable job.
Keep up the good work, Habeel!
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Charlie Cocksedge is a journalist and sub-editor at UNILAD. He graduated from the University of Manchester with an MA in Creative Writing, where he learnt how to write in the third person, before getting his NCTJ. His work has also appeared in such places as The Guardian, PN Review and the bin.