Jeremy Dylan McCarroll of Highlands Ranch, who died after running into a burning house to rescue two friends, is one of 22 people who won the Carnegie Medal on Thursday.
Given by the Carnegie Hero Fund Commission, the award honors people who risk their lives to save, or attempt to save, the lives of others.
“We are just overwhelmed and totally honored by this,” said McCarroll’s mother, Patty McCarroll.
On Aug. 3, 2008, Jeremy McCarroll, 20, was spending the night with friends at a house in Roxborough Village when a fire started. He fled the burning home with Devin Barnhart and another man, but when they heard screams coming from the second floor, McCarroll and Barnhart ran back inside to rescue their friends.
Barnhart suffered burns on more than 70 percent of his body, but survived. McCarroll, however, died of smoke inhalation, as did the two people he tried to save, Joey Shed ron, 22, and Amber Jeffers, 18.
“That was the kind of person Jeremy was,” said his mother.
The Carnegie medal, which comes with a small financial award, will go to Jeremy’s brother, Nathan McCarroll, who is now at Front Range Community College, studying EMT training and firefighting.
The brothers, born 18 months apart, were best friends.
“I always told them, ‘In the order of things, you think of God first, everyone else next, and yourself third,’ ” Patty McCarroll said. “God blessed me with two very brave, compassionate boys, and he took one of them home.”
Colleen O’Connor: 303-954-1083 or coconnor@denverpost.com
