LAWRENCE TWP, Clearfield County — Butler native Dakota Taylor wanted to start a brand new life in a new place with his fiancée, and he did just that in a big way.

Taylor, 24, was smoking a cigarette in front of his three-unit apartment building late at night on Sept. 23 when he saw the police speeding toward the building.

“I'm in my boxers and the police come flying into the parking lot and run up to the neighbor's door,” he recalled.

The police instructed Taylor to get those in his apartment and the one other apartment outside because there was a fire.

“I ran in and told my fiancée to get out and I went to the other neighbors and said, 'Hey, there's a fire, get yourselves and your kids out,'” Taylor said.

When he went to the other neighbor's apartment to alert the elderly female resident, no one answered the door.

Taylor ran through his apartment to the woman's back door, where a police officer was trying in vain to get the locked door open. The young man took matters into his own hands.

“I just kicked the back door in,” Taylor said.

The other neighbor, who had gotten his family out of their apartment, arrived at the woman's back door with a hooded sweat shirt, which the police officer intercepted to put over his nose and mouth to help him breathe in the smoke-filled apartment.

“He took two steps in and ran right back out,” Taylor said. “I ran in and saw a pack of hamburger buns so I ripped the bag open and dumped the buns out so I could put the bag over my face.”

Taylor, bumping into furnishings and wall hangings in the thick smoke, felt his way to the front door.

“I opened the front door and smoke came pouring out of that,” Taylor said.

The police officer ran through the apartment and out the front door, where Taylor asked for the police flashlight.

At first the officer refused, but relented at Taylor's insistence.

Taylor then ran into the apartment, where the amount of thick, black smoke was increasing.

“I saw the bedroom door with the flashlight, so I felt the door and it was really hot,” Taylor said, “so I kicked that door and that's where all the flames were.”

He spied a woman on the floor of the bedroom whose eyes were open and who was breathing.

Taylor said a police officer then entered the bedroom as he was about to pick the woman up. Before running back out of the bedroom the officer advised Taylor not to pick the woman up because she may have burns.

“So I put the flashlight in my mouth and grabbed both her legs and dragged her out of there,” Taylor said.

Once he got near the front door, a police officer entered and helped Taylor pull the woman a few more feet until she was outside on the front porch.

The woman was flown to a trauma hospital, but died earlier this week. Taylor said she had been very ill before the fire.

“She got to live another two weeks, and I'm happy for that,” Taylor said.

Asked why he ran into a burning building to save a neighbor he had never even met, Taylor said his instincts and upbringing kicked in.

“I just thought, 'I need to do this,'” Taylor said. “I'm the person that my mum raised and she did a heck of a job.”

He said he comes from a small Butler family, and that “family is everything.”

“I just think that if that happened to me, I would want somebody to do the same thing and care as much as I do,” Taylor said.

He didn't emerge from the building unscathed, as he found himself vomiting outside the burning apartment from not being able to catch his breath once he dragged the woman out.

“I told the paramedics 'I need oxygen. I need oxygen,'” Taylor recalled.

The paramedics immediately put him in the ambulance and strapped an oxygen mask to his soot-stained face. He breathed the life-sustaining gas for about 15 minutes until he was able to get his breath on his own.

“I coughed up black stuff for two weeks after it happened,” he said.

Summit Township resident Michele Taylor, Dakota's mother, said her son called her after taking a shower on the night of the rescue.

“I was very relieved that everyone had made it out OK,” she said. “He is my wild child. He has no fear of anything.”

She said while he was a daredevil growing up, Dakota also had a huge heart that he didn't always show to everyone.

“But being his mum, I've seen it,” she said.

The elder Taylor said she regretted that the woman had died in the hospital, but not her son's actions.

“I'm glad that he did what he did,” she said. “I'm very proud of him.”

Dakota said the gravity of what could have happened on Sept. 23rd hit him while he showered once the police and EMTs were gone.

“I just sat there and thought, 'That was just like out of a movie,'” he said. “No words can describe it. I'm just glad I didn't hesitate.”

He said the woman's family thanked him profusely and kept him apprised of her condition in the hospital as they visited her apartment to retrieve items that hadn't been ruined in the fire.

A Lawrence Township police report only stated that the fire appeared to have started near the front door. It did not give a damage estimate or cause.

As for Taylor, he has no regrets.

“I can't say I'd have done anything different.”