A quick-thinking 12-year-old boy alerted a neighbor to a fire outside the neighbor’s house Thursday.
“He kept the home from burning and potentially saved their lives,” Seymour Deputy Fire Marshal Timm Willis said.
Marvin Matovu, a Seymour Middle School honor student, was on Rolling Hills Drive when he noticed the plastic lattice attached to a porch across the road was burning.
He took immediate action, Willis said.
Elizabeth Vicidomino was home inside the house and had just put her 8‑month-old son down for a nap about 10:30 a.m.
“Then she hears someone telling her there’s a fire,” Willis said.
It was 12-year-old Marvin.
Vicidomino said she was upstairs in her house when she heard the door bell ring — a bunch of times.
“As I was coming down the stairs I saw his face pressed up against the window and he yelled ‘There’s a fire!’” Vicidomino said. “I looked to my left and I see my porch in flames.”
She retrieved her child, left the house and called 911.
“He (Marvin) was very courageous. He walked right up onto the front porch despite the fact it was burning,” Vicidomino said.
Efforts to reach Marvin’s family weren’t successful Thursday.
A landscaper was also in the neighborhood. He detached a garden hose from a sprinkler, Vicidomino turned the faucet on and the man sprayed the flames.
Fire officials didn’t get the landscaper’s name, as he left shortly after they arrived on scene.
Willis said the fire was just starting to spread onto the wooden porch.
“He put 90 percent of it out before we got there,” Willis said. “There was just some smoldering.”
Willis said the fire was accidentally caused by discarded ashes from a cigar.
The homeowner had been enjoying a “once a year” cigar the night before, Willis said, and had ashed off the porch. He had used a watering can to douse the ground, but the ashes still managed to smolder.
