WARNING: This article contains a graphic photo of one of the victims.
A father is recovering Thursday night from the aftermath of a Cleveland apartment complex explosion where he heroically saved his two stepchildren from a fire.
Multiple people were hospitalized and displaced due to the fire and explosion. Watch more:
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Cordale Sheffield is 30 years old. He lives with his two stepchildren and girlfriend at an apartment building in Cleveland's Garden Valley neighborhood.
He's currently in the hospital undergoing major medical treatment, so his eldest sister, Cierra Alqawi, spoke on his behalf.
Alqawi has been in the hospital with Sheffield since the explosion happened.
She told me she first found out about the explosion and her brother's injuries through social media.
"Somebody was recording him up close. I saw my brother. I saw the comments saying he looked like a zombie. He looked like that. That's what he looked like," Alqawi said.
Alqawi visited him in the hospital shortly after he was transported.
Alqawi explained that Sheffield was blown from the apartment complex when the explosion happened, but rather than running from the chaos, he stormed back into the flames.
"When he got up, he looked up and he saw the two kids were still in the apartment, the ones that he was watching over. Those are his stepchildren," she said.
She added that Sheffield told the two children, aged 10 and 11, to jump from the building, but only one did.
"He had to go back through the building to go get her and that's when he got mostly burned. He went back in the fire to save her, but he was already burnt up. I think that's when his hair caught on fire and stuff when he went back in," Alqawi explained.
Sheffield now suffers from burns across 92% of his body.
"They removed all of his skin, so he has no skin. He's going in for his fourth surgery tomorrow," she told me.
The surgery is slated to last six hours on Friday, according to Alqawi.
Alqawi said Sheffield is alert, though. He's able to move his eyes and tongue, but can't move more than that due to the risk of tearing his healing wounds.
"To be honest, this was another blow because we already lost a little brother. I lost another little brother, so Cordale was depressed about that. We lost him in 2020," she shared.
Alqawi said Sheffield's girlfriend is also shattered by the incident.
"She got remorse because she was at work. She thinks she should have been there with him," Alqawi said.
Alqawi said the two kids are still hospitalized, mostly sedated, but are doing relatively okay.
"Even though you guys are going through hell and back right now, you gotta be a pretty proud sister," I said to Alqawi.
"Yeah. That's what I told him. I'm proud of him. He's strong," she responded. "I'm proud of my brother because he's one of the ones that would have did it because he did it. He's a hero and everybody's recognizing him as a hero. That's just how I want people to recognize my brother as who he is. He's a fighter. He's a hero."
As Sheffield continues to recover, his family has set up a GoFundMe to help pay for his bills, medical expenses, and aftercare needs.
Sheffield's family expects the hospital stay to last at least six months.
Sheffield's brother, Chrishad, told me their mother, Carmen Scott, told him, "She wants the world to see what that explosion did to her baby, and how even in that pain his selfless act of saving more than himself ended up in the state he is in now."
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