Soon, 2-year-old Davion McGhee would tumble out the window toward Johnson's arms. It was the beginning of Friday's rescue in the 2300 block of N.Holton St.., an effort that drew 50 firefighters to the burning house.

According to Milwaukee Police Detective Moises Gomez, the fire began while 31-year-old David McGhee was in the garage of his rented home, working on a car. Something, possibly a spark hitting some spilled gasoline, flared and sent flames roaring through the house. McGhee ran out. His four children, Dyshayla, 9, Deja, 6, David, 5, and Davion, 2, panicked and ran upstairs, where they got trapped by the smoke.

Milwaukee Fire Chief Douglas Holton said firefighters got the call at 10:18 a.m. and got to the scene within two minutes. By then, neighbors had already arrived.

John Starzinski, 57, was inside his house when he heard somebody scream, "Oh my God, they're trapped."

He rushed outside, he said, to find McGhee looking up to his children in the window.

Starzinski darted to the front yard and waved down Johnson and his partner, Officer Ray Horn, who were passing in a squad car.

Starzinski and Johnson ran to the back of the house, while Horn tried to smash a window, cutting his hand.

By then, neighbor Raymond Herrera, 47, had run to the front of the house, where he and a friend kicked down the door. Inside, Herrera saw flames shooting up the steps and out the basement. The heat and smoke were paralyzing.

"We got three steps, and that was as far as we could get," he said.

Out back, Johnson, 40, decided time was running out and the children would have to jump or choke. So he told them to throw their little brother down to him and their father. It was "terrifying," he said.

On the way out the window, Davion hit an air conditioner and began spinning through the air.

His father caught most of Davion's weight, Johnson said, and he held up the rest.

"He just had this extreme look of relief that at least the baby got out safe at that point," Johnson said of McGhee.

But then other children were no longer at the window, jolting Starzinski and Johnson, who thought they'd run back into the smoke. But the sight of shattered glass spraying from the home told them that firefighters had arrived and gone inside to rescue the others.

The flames were under control within a half-hour. All four children were taken to Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, where they were treated for smoke inhalation and released.

"I got a 2-year-old myself," and another child on the way, said Johnson. "All I could think of was what if it was my two kids up there. I would want anybody, even a complete stranger, to do what they could to get them out safely."

Written by Milwaukee Journal Sentinel