Good Samaritan helped mail carrier save packages in Wake Forest

WAKE FOREST, NC -- Derek Brown says he was taking his son to school Tuesday morning when the boy noticed there was something very wrong with a mail delivery truck near the intersection of Heritage Lake Road and Heritage Heights Lane.

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"My son says, 'Dad there's flames coming off the dashboard,'" Brown recalled.

So Brown called 911 and then decided to help the postal worker.

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"She was in the process of starting to pull packages out. So I just jumped in and gave her a hand," he said.

Brown didn't realize at the time it was all being captured on two smart phone videos, but he did realize almost all the packages were from Amazon and were likely Christmas presents.

"I was just there to help someone out and to try to make it a merry Christmas for someone else or some other family that was looking for these packages for their children or their loved ones," he said.

Brown has since become a part of an internet sensation - the postal carrier and passerby who saved Christmas. Brown doesn't seem to mind the title of good Samaritan but will quickly tell you he wasn't about to be a hero.

"When the flames encased the cab you could see them coming to the back. And at that point the emergency services, police, fire trucks, started pulling up and we just backed away," he recalled.

But they got the majority of the packages out of the truck. The others got doused with water but apparently many of them survived, were repackaged, and sent back to customers.