A heroic mother perished in a house fire after saving her newborn daughter’s life in Wyoming, Illinois, on Monday, January 30.
As flames and smoke ripped through the upstairs area of the home, Shelby Carter, 21, strapped her 12-day-old baby Keana into a car seat and dropped her from a second-story window. Miraculously, Keana survived with just a minor burn and was released from the hospital shortly after being admitted. Carter, however, died in a bedroom from smoke inhalation, the Washington Post reported. She was living with the child’s father, Shawn Davis, and her mother, Kathy Hardy, but only Carter and Keana were home at the time of the blaze.
“It’s just incredible that she was able to pull her thoughts together to save her baby,” Ed Foglesonger, chief of the Wyoming-Speer Fire Protection District, told the paper. “It’s just too bad she couldn’t save herself, but I’d say it’s nothing short of a miracle the way it ended up.”
Carter turned 21 the day before her death and was studying to become a pharmacy technician, according to her obituary.
“Her 21st birthday was yesterday and on Facebook she had posted, you know, ‘What a great birthday!’” Carter’s cousin Shawn Burweld told local news station WMBD. “And this morning on Snapchat I’d seen ‘loving these mommy moments’ and she had the baby laying her chest.”
A GoFundMe page has been set up to raise money for Keana. The money will be put in a trust.
The cause of the fire is under investigation.
