Previous Carnegie Medal awardee Charles S. Harris, right, adorns Carnegie Hero Joshua Stewart Wright with a Carnegie Hero lapel pin after presenting him with the Carnegie Medal on Friday, June 21, 2019, in Dawsonville, Ga.
On April 24, 2016, Wright saved a 2-year-old girl from a burning vehicle in Wilmington, N.C. The vehicle had left the road and struck a tree near a park entrance. Unable to open the vehicle’s doors, Wright climbed through an opening at the vehicle’s rear windshield and advanced to the middle row. He grasped the girl and passed her outside to a bystander. The mother was also removed from the vehicle. As conditions worsened others attempted to remove the girl’s brother from his seat before the vehicle was engulfed by flames, but their efforts were not successful.
“I know that Joshua’s biggest regret is that the girl’s brother could not also have been rescued. Not everyone is successful in their rescue efforts, nor does every hero survive,” said Harris. “Joshua unconsciously…and selflessly laid his life on the line for another and for that he will be eternally remembered in the face of God and his friends.”
Harris was awarded the Carnegie Medal in November 1963.