Hero who rescued neighbour tells of horror at blaze death

A HERO neighbour has described how he freed a man from a burning house only to turn in horror to see the body of a woman lying in the garden.

The 35-year-old woman suffered severe burns and died from her injuries in hospital, while her partner - named locally as 40-year-old Norman Gosman - was taken to hospital suffering from smoke inhalation.

The neighbour, who wished to remain anonymous, told how he smashed in the front door of the property in Fernieside Avenue, Moredun, with a sledgehammer to free the man. Tragically, he then realised the woman had already leapt from the 15ft-high bedroom window.

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He said: "I was sitting at home playing my Playstation when I heard screaming coming from the neighbour's house.

"I looked out the window and saw the flames, so I grabbed my sledgehammer and ran to the house and started attacking the door with it.

"I managed to put one of the door panels through and reached my hand in to try and release the latch, but when I looked through I saw Norrie standing at the other side of the door.

"He said the mortis lock was on and he couldn't find the key, so I just started battering the door with the sledgehammer and eventually broke through. I was hitting it so hard that the sledgehammer broke with the force."

The good Samaritan then described seeing the victim lying on the ground.

He said: "I thought it was a black cushion at first but when I looked closer I realised it was a person.

"All of her clothes were on fire. One of the other neighbours ran and got buckets of water to put out the flames.Norrie was coughing and he kept asking for his girlfriend. By that time the fire brigade and ambulance had arrived, and the paramedics put him in the ambulance straight away so that he didn't look round and see her lying there on the ground."

At its height 32 firefighters attended the blaze which was described as "very severe and extremely hot".

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A police spokesman said investigations were still ongoing to discover the cause of the blaze.

He also said that the victim would not be officially named by police until her next of kin had been informed.