WXII-TV

Caleb Taylor re-enacts how he unbuckled his seat belt, crawled into the front seat, steered the car to the side of the road and shut it off when his mom wouldn't respond.

A 5-year-old North Carolina boy wants to be called "Caleb Batman" after he  took control of the family car and steered it to safety when his mom suffered a seizure at the wheel.

As his mom was having the attack, Caleb Taylor unbuckled his seat belt, crawled into the front seat, steered the car to the side of the road, and shut it off when his mom wouldn't respond as they were driving near their home Tuesday in Madison, NBC station WXII of Winston-Salem reported.

A passerby called 911 and tended to Sandra Taylor, who is recovering at home.

Video on WXII-TV: 5-year-old safely stops car after mom has seizure in Rockingham County

Sandra Taylor told WSOC-TV of Charlotte that Caleb was buckled into a car seat in the back when she had the seizure near their home in central North Carolina not far from the Virginia border.

"I was asleep. I was taking a nap, and I just woke up," Caleb told WSOC. "Then I saw her not driving."

When his mom didn't respond, "I unbuckled and turned the car off," he said.

Caleb put the car in neutral, pulled the keys from the ignition and ran for help, even though "I was pretty scared," he said.

Dad Robert Taylor said he'd taught Caleb to do that if he was ever in trouble.

"I've always told him if a car runs away, turn the ignition off. If something happens, turn the wheel, turn the ignition off," said Taylor, who told WXII that Caleb "knows how to start a car and hold a steering wheel."

Even so, he said, "it's just a miracle of the Lord that he was there at the right place at the right time to give him the strength and the courage to know what to do."

Taylor said he told his son, "You are my hero."

In that case, Caleb told WXII, he wants to be called "Caleb Batman."

Follow M. Alex Johnson on Twitter and Facebook.

The unemployed subway hero who saved a baby in a stroller after it was swept by a strong wind onto an elevated subway track in Brooklyn was reunited with the family on Wednesday – right after getting a new job.

“That’s the little man that got me a job today,” Delroy Simmonds told the New York Daily News.

Simmonds visited the boy and his mother Wednesday at Brookdale Hospital, where the child was being treated for a small head injury. The baby is expected to be OK.

Simmonds said the mother thanked him, and he shrugged off talk about his heroism. He pointed out that he's a father and would expect anyone else to do the same for his child.

"I don't really feel like much of a hero," he told NBCNewYork.com. "I didn't really think, I just reacted."

Simmonds was on his way to a job interview at about 1 p.m. Tuesday when a powerful blast of air carried the stroller from the elevated track onto the J train platform at Van Siclen Avenue. The baby and stroller both landed on the tracks.

Simmonds immediately jumped onto the tracks, rescuing the baby before the next train came into the station.

Simmonds missed his job interview but says he was offered a job only a day later as a maintenance worker at Kennedy Airport on Wednesday. He starts in two weeks.

“Thank you, Lord. Thank you, thank you, thank you,” Simmonds told the Daily News was his response to the job offer. “I’m just excited to start working.”

Simmonds said he received a slew of employment offers Wednesday from people who heard of the incident.

“It says a lot about his character that he would jump on the tracks to save a little boy,” Guy Rodriguez, project manager for the janitorial company, told the Daily News. “We are happy to hire Delroy. We are honored.”

NBCNewYork.com contributed to this report.

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Louis Lanzano / AP

Two vehicles, one badly burnt out is removed from the scene of the house fire on Tuesday, in Carmel, N.Y. A police captain, his wife and two teenage daughters died in a fire that swept through their home early Tuesday.

CARMEL, N.Y. — A suburban New York police captain helped save his son from a horrific house fire, then ran back inside to try to rescue his wife and two teenage daughters -- and died with them in the blaze, according to his brother-in-law.

“Tommy Sullivan was a hero,” Thomas Zielinski told The Journal News in White Plains, N.Y., after speaking to the surviving son. “After he got his son out, he ran back in to get the rest of the family.”

The son, 20-year-old Thomas Sullivan Jr., escaped by crawling down the stairs and out of the garage after being woken up by his father early Tuesday morning. He pulled the garage door open with a rope because the electricity was out. He told arriving police officers that his family was trapped inside their Carmel home, about 60 miles north of New York City.

“He was screaming that there was fire in the house,” Carmel Police Chief Michael Johnson said.

Read NBCNewYork.com's complete coverage of fatal fire

The other victims are believed to be Sullivan’s wife, Donna, and his daughters, 18-year-old Meaghan and 13-year-old Mairead.

“They were pretty well burned. It’s very difficult to identify them without an autopsy and DNA,” said Johnson.

Louis Lanzano / AP

The completely destroyed home is partially visible on Wyndham Lane on Tuesday in Carmel, N.Y.

The son was treated for smoke inhalation at a hospital and released, said Vickie Zielinski, Donna Sullivan’s sister-in-law.

The blaze was so intense that it melted the siding of two nearby homes and prevented firefighters from entering, said Johnson. It took firefighters from several towns three hours to extinguish the flames. Video of the fire, posted on the website of the Journal News, showed the home being nearly entirely consumed by a fireball.

"There's nothing standing but two garage doors," said Lorraine Girolamo, who lives two doors down. She said she didn't know the Sullivans well but saw them daily and would wave hello. She said they moved in about 11 years ago when the residential development opened.

Officials were still looking for a cause into blaze.

“Everything’s being explored ... whether it was suspicious or not is still being investigated,” Johnson said.

Officials were able to find Sullivan’s body on the rear deck, where Johnson said he apparently landed after jumping from the second floor.

Sullivan was captain of the Larchmont Police Department.

'Devastated'
The fire was reported by a neighbor just before 2 a.m. Johnson said no 911 calls came from inside the house, which he said was equipped with multiple wired smoke detectors. None sent any alarm to a monitoring station.

Sullivan was a former New York police officer assigned to the Bronx who had left the city for the comparatively tranquil suburbs two decades ago because he felt he could make a bigger difference in a smaller community.

“We are devastated, the village of Larchmont as a whole,” said Larchmont Police Chief John Poleway, who described Sullivan as “full of integrity, honesty, he was dedicated to family.”

Sullivan’s daughters were students at Carmel High School. Mairead was a freshman and Meaghan a senior.

“The school community is devastated,” said the district’s superintendent, James Ryan. “We are working together in this very difficult time to offer support to students and staff.”

Principal Kevin Carroll said the girls “were good students and nice kids.”

“Obviously today their teachers were very upset, and of course the other students,” he said, adding that school psychologists were following the girls’ class schedules to see the children who would be most upset.

He said that many of the students knew of the fire by the time they got to school, and that administrators made an official announcement at 7:10 a.m.

“It was very quiet for the most part,” Carroll said of the school’s atmosphere. “There was something in the air.”

A funeral was planned for Saturday morning at St. James the Apostle Church in Carmel. Viewing will be at the Balsamo-Cordovano Funeral Home in Carmel; hours have not yet been scheduled.

NBCNewYork.com and the Associated Press contributed to this report.

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CHICAGO – Four young friends who fell into a frozen pond in Chicago’s northern suburb of Mariner’s Cove have a new hero today -- a rugged dad with a ready smile who didn’t think twice about plunging into ice to rescue one boy.

“I was working on the computer and my kids came in yelling that someone fell through the ice,” Robert George told The Chicago Sun-Times. “So I ran out, dressed in a T-shirt and sweatpants, and saw that two of them were out a ways and two others were closer, and there were some adults trying to throw them a rope.”

According to Chicago's Daily Herald, no one knows how long the 16-year-old boy, 12-year-old girl and two 9-year-old boys were in the frigid water. (There were conflicting reports on the gender and ages of the four children. Except for one, their names have not been made public.)

What they do know is that the four had wandered onto the pond, despite parents’ warnings to stay off the thinning ice.

"I was thinking I was going to die," nine-year-old Ryan Dugan told NBCChicago.com. "The water was up to about my neck and I was trying to doggie-paddle to the shore."

Read NBCChicago.com’s Four Children Rescued from North Suburban Lake

Dugan, a fourth grader, said he had followed the other three onto Third Lake, near Grayslake, shortly before 5 p.m. on Thursday when all four broke through the ice and went under. The children were about 50 feet from shore in one direction and about 20 feet away in the other, Grayslake Fire Protection District Lt. Mike Lakins told NBCChicago.com.

Neighbors heard the children cry for help and were able to pull three to safety by using ropes.

“They were saying help us, please help us,” Izabela Stepien, a rescuer, told NBCChicago.com.

But for the fourth boy it was far from over.

“He was out there and he kept saying 'I can’t feel my legs,'” George said. “I just couldn’t stand here. I know I am a good swimmer and I could fight my way through the ice.”

George tied the rope around his waist and forged ahead, grabbing the boy and pulling him to safety.

The children were not hospitalized but were still dealing with mild hypothermia. They also learned a valuable lesson, Dugan said, adding “don’t go onto to thin ice.”

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