SAN DIEGO (CBS 8) - Just days after he helped save a family from a raging apartment fire in Clairemont, a heroic San Diego police officer is at it again.
This time, officer Zach Bradley pulled a suspected drunk driver out of her wrecked vehicle. An SUV flipped over and hit a natural gas meter on the side of an apartment building in Clairemont.
It happened just hours after Bradley wrapped up a press conference where he spoke about rescuing a woman and her two daughters as they jumped from a second-story building engulfed in flames Tuesday morning.
SAN DIEGO (CNS/CBS 8) - A San Diego police officer who helped two teen-aged girls and their mother trapped on the second story of their apartment building to escape during a raging fire Tuesday morning is being heralded a hero.
One of the first public-safety personnel to arrive at the two-story complex, San Diego police Officer Zach Bradley, rescued two girls, ages 13 and 16, and their mother by catching them as they jumped out a window of their burning second-floor apartment, SDFRD spokesman Maurice Luque said.
Officer Zach Bradley says he was just doing his job.
"It's what we're trained to do," the 27-year-old said during a news conference Wednesday evening. "There was no other way to evacuate at that moment in time"
"Officer Bradley deserves a lot of credit," said Captain Sean Murphy of San Diego Fire-Rescue. "I believe he saved their lives."
The two-alarm fire tore through a Clairemont apartment complex Tuesday, injuring four people, leaving 21 residents homeless and causing about $1.1 million in damages.
A cooking accident sparked the blaze in the 3800 block of Caminito Aguilar just after midnight, according to the San Diego Fire-Rescue Department.
It took firefighters about a half-hour to subdue the flames, which spread through a total of four rental units, Luque said.
Medics took two teenage girls and two women to hospitals for treatment of smoke inhalation and non-life-threatening burns.
The American Red Cross was called in to help the displaced residents arrange for emergency lodging.
Investigators determined that the blaze was sparked by grease that caught fire as a resident was cooking french fries in her downstairs apartment, Luque said.
The monetary losses were set at $900,000 to the structure and $200,000 to contents.