An elderly Dallas man was killed early Tuesday when he couldn't get out of his burning home before being overtaken by smoke.
Firefighters arrived at a home on the 1800-block of Billie Drive in south Dallas just before 2:30 a.m. and reported seeing smoke and fire coming from the home.
While fighting the fire, firefighters also found an unresponsive man, 85-year-old Marvin Dorsey. Dorsey was taken outside and rescuers began CPR before taking him to Methodist Central Hospital where he was pronounced dead.
Dorsey's son, Reginald, talked with NBC 5 and had this to say about his father.
"I went to the hospital, but I was almost certain when I got here that he was probably already deceased from just so much ... the fire trucks and all this foam ... you pretty well know," Reginald said.
"My dad was from Texas and was a loving guy. He raised seven children, two sets of twins. He wasn't a guy that deserted his family ... he was a family man," Reginald said. "We was a loving family ... we took care of each other. We're going to miss him. We're going to miss our dad, but we're going to make it with the Lord's help."
The fire department told Dorsey's family that the fire started in a breaker box, which Reginald said was in his father's bedroom. The fire quickly spread up the wall in a closet and into the attic.
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"He had made it to the kitchen, but kind of got lost in his house with all the smoke in it," Dorsey said.
Dorsey said the smell of smoke was throughout the home and that his father's room was destroyed by flames.
There were no other injuries reported.
On Wednesday, Dallas-Fire Rescue plans to conduct a smoke detector blitz in the neighborhood to make sure as many people have working smoke detectors as possible.
NBC 5's Amanda Fitzpatrick contributed to this report.
