Dramatic Body Cam Footage Shows Police Officer Rescuing Elderly Woman from Girardville Home

Image: Girardville PD/Facebook video

Girardville’s Mayor has released body cam footage showing the borough’s police chief Fred Lahovski rescue an elderly woman from her home last week as a fire broke out next door.

Mayor Michael Zangari released the video on Tuesday. It’s about 5 minutes in length and was recorded just as an apparent kitchen fire on A St. in Girardville was breaking out.

Body Cam Footage Shows Girardville Police Chief Rescue Elderly Woman from Fire Scene

According to reporting from The Shenandoah Sentinel, firefighters were dispatched at about 7:30 a.m. on April 29 to 235 A St. But before firefighters got to the scene, Lahovski was on the scene. That’s where his body cam footage picks up.

Neighbors can be seen tell him that someone was inside the home at 237 A St.

“There’s somebody in that house,” a woman tells Lahovski.

Lahovski barely blinks and methodically makes his way up a set of porch stairs and prepares to go in the home next to the burning building. He holds back a barefooted man from entering the building and the chief makes his way to the second floor.

You can hear him in a loud but calm voice say several times, “Ma’am! Come with me. Your house is on fire.”

As he gets to the bedroom doorway, there’s a woman half asleep and disoriented lying on the bed.

Lahovski picks up the pace of the situation and quickly gets the woman out of bed and tells her they need to get out of the house.

“I’m here to help you. Hurry, hurry, hurry. You don’t need your shoes,” he says. “I’ll get you anything you need. Let’s just get the hell outta here.”

The chief then helps the woman walk down the hallway toward the staircase.

Lahovski then calmly helps the woman navigate the stairs on the way down, eventually making it to the front door and then down the porch stairs to safety.

You can see the full video below as it was shared on the department’s Facebook page: