Meet Keegan.
Keegan is 7-years old. He attends first grade at Mossy Creek Elementary School.
And he's really smart.
He can tell you about the electro-magnetic spectrum. He can name the colors of the prism. In order.
But the smartest thing Keegan has said to date involves what he told his parents in the early morning hours of Nov. 18.
“Something's the matter.”
Indeed.
About 6 a.m. last Friday, Keegan noticed his night light and his fan had cut off, because he sleeps with a fan, his father, Kevin, said.
“He immediately noticed that something wasn't right,” Kevin recalled. “He thought to come and wake us up, and that was a smart thing to do.”
“He said it twice, because the first time, I thought it was just the power flickering,” mother Savannah added. “I told him it was okay, just go back to bed, but he said no, something's the matter.”
Kevin said the couple noticed the house filling with smoke.
“I frantically started looking for where it was coming from,” he said. “I could tell is wasn't coming from inside, so I went outside and around the back of the house and saw flames about a foot and a half high come bursting from and outside outlet on the side of the house. I ran back inside and grabbed a fire extinguisher. By the time I made it back out, (the fire) has grown to double the size, so you can imagine what it would have done if we had not found it until five minutes later.”
Firefighters arrived quickly and extinguished the blaze.
They determined that water had leaked into the outlet and caused a short that started the blaze.
“It was the quick thinking of Keegan Sinclair that woke his parents up and got them evacuated from their smoke-filled home,” said Bryce Barrett, White County Public Safety spokesman, in a statement issued over the weekend. "White County Public Safety and White County Fire Service personnel applaud young Keegan for his quick actions that saved his family and home from what could have been a tragedy. Because of Keegan, his parents and siblings were able to get out of the home and the fire was quickly extinguished."
Keegan does very well in school.
“He knows middle school math,” Savannah said. “He knows elementary algebra. He can tell you tons of things about how light works and the magnetic spectrum.”
He's fascinated with space exploration and proudly wears his favorite NASA hat.
Perhaps one day he will become an engineer or a scientist, but for now, Keegan Sinclair is a bonafide, life-saving hero.
How does that make him feel?
“Happy,” he said with a shy smile.