BALDWIN COUNTY, Ga. — Family members are grieving after 45-year-old Lloyd Mitchem died in a house fire Wednesday night in Baldwin County.
The family is calling their lost loved one a hero.
13WMAZ actually talked to Mitchem last year when his 5-year-old daughter fell down a well and he was the one to rescue her.
“There's only one man as great as him,” Mitchem’s oldest daughter Aaliyah says.
Born and raised in Milledgeville, he called himself Lloyd, but Aaliyah says everyone who loved him called him "Snug."
“My daddy was a very honorable man. He would give you the shirt off his back,” she explains.
Aaliyah says she lived with her dad until she moved out in February.
“I had came back from Vidalia to visit this week because I’m about to start school soon.”
She and her mother, Roseann Jackson, were just down the road from Mitchem's home Wednesday night when they heard sirens passing by.
“Her phone went off from his sister and that's when everything went down,” Aaliyah says.
Fire Investigator Captain Bradley Towe says they got the call around 10 p.m. He says by the time they arrived, the home was already in flames.
“All I could do was scream and cry for my daddy and hope and pray that my daddy would walk around that corner and tell me that he was OK,” she cries.
Firefighters say Mitchem was trying to get his dogs out of the home and he didn't make it out.
“I have 26 years with him, I just can't, ”Jackson says.
"My daddy died a hero,” Aaliyah says. “That's all I can say. It's all I can keep saying is that my daddy died a hero."
Towe says the fire began in the front left corner of the home. They're still investigating the cause.
Fire Chief Victor Young says this death is personal to the station. Mitchem's brother, Willy, is also a Baldwin County volunteer firefighter.
In April 2022, Lloyd and Baldwin County Fire helped save his daughter after she fell down into a 40-foot-deep well.
“The father was actually the smallest person there, so we set up a rigging system and lowered the father down. I don't understand how she was staying afloat because she can't swim,” Lloyd Mitchem said last year, describing the rescue.
The Mitchem family says that Lloyd did not have home insurance, so they have a GoFundMe page to help pay for the funeral expenses.