NORTH MIAMI BEACH, Fla. – A man was taken to a hospital after being burned in an early morning fire at a North Miami Beach home.
The fire started just before 3 a.m. Tuesday at a house on Northeast 158th Street near Northeast 16th Avenue.
According to Miami-Dade Fire Rescue, three people and a dog were inside the home at the time of the fire.
"It was scary, 'cause you don't expect to wake up in the middle of the night to a fire," renter Ashley Ellis told Local 10 News.
Ellis, her boyfriend, Shawn Wakeley, and their dog made it out safely, but the owner of the house was pulled out by firefighters and taken to the burn unit at Jackson Memorial Hospital's Ryder Trauma Center.
"He wouldn't move," Wakeley said. "I couldn't get him to move, so I had to pull him from out of his bedroom, where the fire was, to the kitchen, and then that's when I ran out the door because I couldn't breathe."
Ellis credited their dog, Boomer, with saving their lives.
"If it wasn't for him waking up, then we'd all be dead," she said.
The renters said a cigarette likely sparked the fire, saying the owner is known to smoke in his bed.
An official cause of the fire remains under investigation.