‘He was a joy.’ Family, friends gather to remember loving father who died in fire.
From the first time he met Demonte Sherrill, it was clear to Leon Branch what sort of person he was.
Branch had been struggling to roll a large stump off his lawn when Sherrill was walking by and noticed his difficulties. The young man immediately went to his house, got a chainsaw and helped Branch dispose of the wood.
“He was always there to help,” Branch said.
More than 100 friends and family members, flocking from states as far as California, packed into a small brick church in Kannapolis Saturday afternoon to pay their respects to Sherrill, one of the two construction workers killed in a massive fire that consumed an apartment building under construction near SouthPark Mall last month.
Sherrill, a 30-year-old father of four, captured much of the nation’s attention with his final Facebook Live video, in which he said was trapped inside a burning building and shouted for help.
“The building’s on fire, and I can’t get out,” he said into his cellphone while holding cloth to cover his mouth. “It’s getting harder and harder for them to see us.”
Sherrill’s mother told WSOC that she watched the final moments of her son’s life on that video, praying he would be able to find his way to safety.
“But just from the (Facebook) Live and the way the room filled up with smoke, I didn’t see there being any hope at that time,” she said.
‘Family was everything to him’
Sherrill loved to fish for bass in Lake Norman, play practical jokes on friends and feast on home-cooked meals, according to family members and friends who attended the memorial service at Covenant Presbyterian Church.
But nothing was more important to the man friends called “Tey” than his four children — two boys and two girls, ages 5 to 13, family members said. Sherrill’s wife, the mother of his four children, died from COVID-19 in 2021. Now the children’s grandparents will care for them.
As of Saturday, a Go FundMe effort had raised nearly $25,000 to help support the children.
Sherrill, a native of Kannapolis, wanted his children to be able to accomplish something he never go to do: graduate from college.
“The pride and joy of his life was his children,” said Rev. William Eddleman Jr., a cousin of Sherrill’s. “Family was everything to him.”
Eddleman remembers how Sherrill comforted his daughter after her boyfriend drowned. And how his jokes invariably got his children laughing.
“He was a joy,” Eddleman said. “He had one of the purest hearts of anyone I ever met ... He didn’t want to hurt anybody. He just wanted to have some fun.”
But he didn’t back down from bullies, said Julisha Massey, a friend who grew up with him. She remembers riding the school bus home with him in elementary school when another boy began picking on her. Sherrill told the boy to back off..
“He was just a sweet, loving boy,” Massey said.
Trapped in an inferno
The May 18 fire that claimed Sherrill’s life was one of the largest blazes Charlotte has seen in decades. Fire officials said the five-alarm blaze was accidental and started in a spray-foam insulation trailer at the construction site. The cause remains under investigation.
Sherrill and the other victim, 58-year-old Reuben Holmes, were on the sixth floor of the building when the fire broke out. The two men worked for an Atlanta-based company that installed windows and doors.
Charlotte Fire Department Chief Reginald Johnson said firefighters who tried to rescue the two men had to call a “Mayday” because they became trapped on the same floor due to limited visibility.
Firefighters rescued 15 other workers, including a crane operator who was stranded 160 feet in the air for more than an hour, with the crane threatening collapse.
Fueled by stacks of wood on the construction site, the fire reached temperatures above 2,000 degrees, fire officials said.
