The two of them stood completely sober when they received a hero medal on Saturday. At the end of March, John van den Broek and Ashraf Khannick kicked in the front door of 94-year-old Truus in Roosendaal. Her house in Roosendaal was on fire and the two men did not hesitate for a moment. “We’d do it again in a heartbeat.”
“Smoke was already coming out of her house. Then we kicked in the door, went in and got the lady out,” John says matter-of-factly.
When Ashraf thinks back to the fire, the woman’s cry for help and the smoke that came out of the letterbox made an impression. “In retrospect, I actually think it was life-threatening what we did, but at that moment I only thought: how do we get that woman out?”
A minute after the woman was rescued, the gas meter exploded in her house: “We were just in time, otherwise it would have ended badly for the lady,” says John soberly.
“I think it’s normal that you help your fellow man.”
Mayor Han van Midden, who pinned on the awards, calls it admirable that the men risked their lives to enter the house.
Yet the men do not see themselves as heroes. “I think it’s normal that you help your fellow man,” says John. He thinks the award is a very nice appreciation from the municipality of Roosendaal. Ashraf is also happy with the award, but he remains modest. “I’ve done this once now, but I think we should appreciate the people who are there for us day and night and who sometimes even do this voluntarily.”
Truus, 94, was also at the meeting. But she has very bad hearing and only watched in silence. According to her rescuers, she looks a lot better again. The woman has been living in a nursing home since the fire.