Boy, 12, saves family from overnight house fire in north St. Louis County

Shortly after midnight Thursday, a home in the 3800 block of Kentucky Derby Drive caught fire. After realizing the home was on fire, 12-year-old Darwin Wallace said he rushed to get his family to safety.

"We all was asleep and I heard the fire, like the tree started hitting on my window and I woke up, took my nephew, put him on my neck and then I went to go get everybody else up," he said.

After getting his grandma from the home's basement, the family had to break the fence in the backyard to get away from the fire.

Wallace's mother told News 4 everything in the home is destroyed, either by fire, smoke, or water damage. She says she lived in the home with her four children and mother, and that her niece and nephew were staying with them for the night.

Both the family and Blackjack fire officials say surveillance video from the home shows a couple of young people in front of the house with fireworks. St. Louis County Police Department officials confirm their bomb and arson squad is assisting in the investigation to determine the cause of the fire.

"If you are going to pop them on other peoples' porches that's just wrong because you don't know who's in that house and you can kill somebody like you almost killed us," Wallace said.

The boy told News 4 his family had some bags of clothes on the front porch that they were going to donate homeless shelters but they were destroyed in the fire.

No one was injured in the fire.

A gofundme has been created to help the family who lost everything in the fire.