There are everyday heroes among us, and Sha’Kyra Aughtry is one of them. In the midst of the deadly snowstorm that hit Buffalo, New York, she saved the life of a 64-year-old man named Joey White who was scared and crying for help just outside her front door.
White is developmentally disabled, and when the storm hit he became stranded in a snow bank. With the frigid temperatures, he was in bad shape. Aughtry heard his pleas, and she and her boyfriend Trent found White and carried him out of the cold and into their home on Christmas Eve.
With White inside, Aughtry began to care for the man. He had been in the storm so long that his clothing was frozen to his body and his hands were frostbitten; she had to cut off his socks and remove his pants with the heat from a hairdryer. She covered him in blankets, but she knew he needed serious help—the frostbite was turning his hands gangrene.
Many emergency medical services were down, so Aughtry posted an urgent message on Facebook needing help. It took two days, but more kind strangers eventually came to the rescue. They plowed a path out of the couple’s home and helped get White to a hospital, where he had fourth-degree frostbite.
Before he could get to the hospital, Aughtry contacted White’s sister, Yvonne, and told her that she had his brother and was taking care of him. To keep White comfortable and take his mind off the pain before they could get care, Aughtry had him FaceTime with his sister.
White remains in the hospital as doctors monitor his frostbite, but he will survive. In the meantime, his sister cannot thank Aughtry and her family enough. “I’m sure he would’ve perished,” she said in a video. “I told Joey, we gained a family… [Aughtry] went above and beyond, for a stranger, what she did is just heartwarming and it makes me cry.”
Sha’Kyra Aughtry and her family rescued a man named Joe White, a 64-year-old man with developmental disabilities, from a snowbank in Buffalo, New York.
Aughtry removed his frozen clothes and wrapped his frostbitten hands until they could get him to a hospital.
h/t: [Neatorama]
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