Crippled gran braves flames to save boy

Press, 17 February 1983, Page 9

Crippled gran braves flames to save boy

NZPA Miami A crippled woman left her crutches behind for the first time in two years when she rushed into a burning room and carried her bed-ridden 12-year-old grandson to safety. "I think I did what any grandmother would have done,” said Myrtle Ricketson aged 77, who suffers from crippling arthritis in her hips. “When it comes to small children, I’d risk my life for any child.” But when she realised what she had done, she col-

lapsed. “I couldn’t walk a step when I came to my senses.” Mrs Ricketson said that she was napping on a couch in her living room on Tuesday when she smelled smoke. She got up, using her crutches, and spotted smoke billowing from the bedroom where her grandson, Craig, was. He suffers from cerebral palsy. No one else was at home. Without thinking Mrs Ricketson dropped the crutches rushed six metres to the bedroom, closed her eyes

held her breath and felt her way to Craig’s bed. She then tucked the 31kg boy under an arm and went outside, stumbling in the living room along the way. “I guess she had a lot of adrenalin running into her system and she ran and did it,” said her physician Dr Armando Rego. Mrs Ricketson who also has cancer, has not walked since she had a bad fall two years ago. “I was certainly praying that the Lord would give me strength to get him out,” she said. “And He did.”