One woman from Buffalo, New York, stepped up to help a 64-year-old man who was caught in the blizzard.
On Dec. 26, Sha’Kyra Aughtry posted a video on her Facebook page and shared she found the man, Joe White, the day before and heard him screaming for help on her street.
“When I looked out the window, he was getting blowed up and down the street,” she said. “It was out of control.”
She further explained his hands had “big ice balls on” them and that her boyfriend carried him inside her house. She later showed his bloody hands and said that he had gangrene. He will lose his fingers, she said.
White is mentally disabled and in a group home, Aughtry said.
She frantically shared she was scared he would die and she had been desperately calling for help to no avail.
She said:
“I’ve called the National Guard. I’ve called 911. I’ve called everybody – they just keep telling me I’m on a list. I don’t want to be on no list. I don’t care about nothing else. This man is not about to die over here.”
According to People, the blizzard has killed at least 50 people.
In an update, Yvonne White, Joe White’s sister, spoke to CNN and said that he is in ICU recovering “with fourth-degree frostbite”
“I’m hoping and praying for the best,” she said.
Joe White’s employer, Ray Barker, said he believes that Joe White left his group home Christmas Eve because he thought he had to go to work on his day off.
He has been working at the North Park Theater since 1980.
“He was in a mess,” Barker told CNN. “And (Aughtry) clearly saved his life.”
Yvonne White credited Aughtry for saving her brother’s life and now considers her to be family.
“We were all trying to help each other and it was wonderful,” she told CNN. “And now I feel like I have a sister and three nephews,” she said, referring to Aughtry and her sons.