Prep basketball star hits winning shot, then he and family escape Mint Hill morning fire

Jan. 28--Tuesday night, Independence High basketball player Marcus Thomas hit the game-winning shot with six seconds left in a 40-39 win over Porter Ridge. A few hours later, as he slept, his life changed.

Thomas, a 16-year-old junior, was awoken around 3:30 in the morning by his older brother Kevin, who was screaming "Fire! Fire! Fire!" The Thomas' home was burning.

"I'm thinking this is a drill," Marcus Thomas said Wednesday. "I'm thinking, 'Oh, he's just playing around,' but I looked outside my window and the car was on fire. It was crazy. I thought I was in a movie."

Marcus jumped out of bed. Kevin Thomas, 25, then woke his parents, Mark and Sylvia, and his sister, Bree, 19. Everyone got in a single file line and got out of the two-story house in a surburban Mint Hill subdivision. About five minutes after they were out of the home, Mark Thomas said there was a loud explosion and part of the debris from it struck his daughter on the leg.

"It was like we were in the military," Mark Thomas said.

It was certainly not the night the Thomases were expecting.

After the basketball game, Mark Thomas was driving his son home when they realized that Marcus had left his book bag at school. Marcus had also begun to feel sick, sitting quietly in the car with his hoodie pulled over his head, complaining of dehydration and exhaustion.

"He really wasn't in the celebrating mode," Mark Thomas said.

So Mark Thomas circled back to school, retrieved the bag, and dropped his son off at home. At the same time, he said he got word that his mother had been admitted into the hospital. So he ran to the drug store and got Marcus some medicine, dropped it off at home and headed over to Presbyterian Matthews Hospital. He stayed there until around midnight and drove home.

By then, his wife, Sylvia was home from work and in the kitchen. The couple talked and were in bed by 12:45 a.m.

Not quite three hours later, chaos hit.

Kevin Thomas ran into his parents' room. "Hey guys," he told them, "get up."

"I didn't question him," Mark Thomas said. "I went downstairs. I saw smoke and I went back up. I got everybody in a line and we got out."

A neighbor, Terry Mullens, told WBTV, the Observer's news partner, that it was a serious blaze. Several hours after the fire started, firefighters were still dousing hot spots in the home on Forrest Rader Drive. A cause has yet to be determined.

"We could see the flames in the garage," Mullens said, "about 15 to 20 feet up above it. We could see all the trusses burning in the garage and throughout the house."

As the family sat in front of the house, wearing pajamas and coats, watching it burn down, everyone suddenly began to panic. Marissa, the family's brown and black Siberian cat, was missing. Firefighters later found her hiding in a corner of the home and administered oxygen to the animal, which was taken to the vet and treated for minor injuries.

Early Wednesday afternoon, Mark Thomas was still wearing his pajamas and flip flops, trying to make sense of it all. He works for Bank of America and his wife works for Wells Fargo, the family said.

His family spent the morning at his brother's house in Mint Hill. The Thomases lost three of their four cars and nearly all of their possessions, including most of their cellphones. The family will be moving into an extended stay hotel, paid for by insurance, as they begin to try to put their lives back together.

"We all made it out safe," Mark Thomas said. "God is good. In that kind of situation, a lot of other things can happen. We lost everything. We've got to get Marcus some playing shoes. I don't want him to miss a beat. But when that happens, you're just trying to get your family and get out. We didn't think about big screen TVs or laptops. The blessing is my whole family got out. The tragedy would've been if I lost anybody. We had five of us in the kitchen at my brother's house, just being thankful and loving each other."

Independence High has launched an effort to help raise money for the family's recovery at www.gofundme.com/thomasfamilyfund.

Marcus, a 6-foot-2 shooting guard at Independence, is the team's leading scorer. He's the only returning starter from last season's 18-11 team. He said he's looking forward to getting back to school and playing again. Independence plays Feb. 3 at home against Garinger.

"This is something I'll never forget," he said. "I'll never forget how lucky we were."

Wertz: 704-358-5133; Twitter: @langstonwertzjr.

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