GATE CITY, Va. (WJHL) — Having a police officer break your door down may not seem like an ideal scenario, but it certainly was for Daniel McMurray Monday morning.
“I’m glad he come on in,” McMurray told News Channel 11 Tuesday. “That’s why I said Cody Johnson with Gate City Police Department, he really saved our life, I guess.”
Gate City Police sergeant saved 3 sleeping occupants from house fire
McMurray and his partner, Angelina Roberts, had spent most of the wee hours Monday wrapping presents and preparing Christmas for their 3-year-old daughter Leanne inside the Gate City home they’d recently rented. The pair were fast asleep in a bedroom, along with Leanne, when a passerby called 911 around 10 a.m.
Johnson, a 14-year law enforcement veteran and sergeant with the Gate City Police Department, arrived at the home on West Jackson Street around the same time as the first of three responding fire departments, whose personnel were busy connecting equipment. That left him to check on potential occupants, and while some neighbors said they believed the home was empty — and loud knocks on the door hadn’t roused anyone — Johnson saw a vehicle in the yard and wasn’t satisfied with the efforts he’d made.
“I looked in the best that I could. I didn’t see anyone but that vehicle being in the back of the yard just concerned me,” he said inside Gate City’s town hall on Christmas Eve morning, stacks of wrapped presents on either side of him…