A mother breaks her back, saving her daughter from a house fire

Lynchburg, Virginia – Crystal Dawson said she was just a mom, but that’s not enough to say.

A woman from Virginia had to catch her stepdaughter when she jumped out of a window to escape the flames that engulfed their home in Lynchburg.

When she did, she fell and injured her back. She is now hospitalized and unable to walk after her spine was broken.

“When I tried to catch my daughter, she landed on my chest,” Crystal said.

Crystal said she woke up around the first hour of the night to make her baby a bottle when she saw the flames. She and her husband Brian Dawson Jr. carried the child out of the house, but their other two children were upstairs.

“I was scared. I cried. I was like Dad, I can’t go out, I can’t go out. And he’s like you have to go out,” Brianna Dawson said.

Brian tried to climb the stairs behind them, but the flames repelled him. The only option now for the kids was to jump out of the second floor window.

Brianna brought her brother Christian Dawson to her room.

“When she picked me up and I saw smoke and I saw the stairs burning. I wondered if there was a fire? And she said yes, we have to jump out the window,” Christian said.

Brian said he was unable to catch them due to a back injury. Christian jumped up and did a pull-up and a roll, and then it was time for Brianna.

“She tells me, Crystal, I’m afraid I don’t want to jump,” Crystal said.

But Crystal insisted, telling her, “You need to jump. I got you. I’ll catch you. “

Her family calls Crystal a hero, but she said she did what any mom would do.

“No mother will stand by and let her children die because of a house fire,” she said. “They will do their best, and if it means I died in her place, I would do it in a second.”

The family says Crystal will need surgery. GoFundMe was created for the family.

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