[Editor's Note: This story has been updated to reflect a correction. It was incorrectly stated that Craig Adams is a Vietnam veteran.]
Craig Adams threatened to take Eisha Steele's life Tuesday evening. Just four hours later, she saved his.
Steele lives in unit 144 at Regency Oaks Apartments. She heard a knock on the door around 10 p.m. It was a man from the second floor. He doesn't speak English well, Steele said, but she managed to make out the message: fire, unit 143.
When she walked outside to check, she saw thick smoke floating from next door. Adams' door.
Earlier in the evening, at around 5:50, the 51-year-old threatened Steele with a butcher knife and said he was going to kill her.
But none of that mattered now.
She pounded at the entrance to 143 and yelled for the old man to come out. Nothing. She called 911.
"I'm trying to save his life, but at the same time, he's been trying to kill me," Steele said. "So it's weird. I just had to forget all of that and get help. I'm not going to let him die."
It wasn't hard for Gainesville Fire Rescue to extinguish the flames. It was just a grease fire. Adams fell asleep while cooking, Gainesville Police Sgt. Brad Litchfield said.
Adams was not harmed, but he was arrested and charged with aggravated assault for threatening Steele with the knife.
He was still in Alachua County Jail on Wednesday night with a bond of $10,000.
Steele is close with her next-door neighbor, she said. Not always, however.
On Tuesday, Steele gave Adams some money to walk across Southwest 34th Street and buy Honey Buns and croissants at Kelly's Kwik Shop for her two children. It wasn't the first time she'd asked him, and she lets him keep whatever money is left.
But this time he didn't buy everything she asked for. When she demanded the rest of her money, Adams got angry. He yelled and stepped toward her. She retreated, but he kept coming. They ended up at her doorstep.
Steele said she ran into her kitchen, grabbed a knife off the top of her fridge and told him to leave. Adams then ran to his apartment and grabbed a knife of his own. A butcher knife. He came back.
"Bitch, if you come outside I'm going to kill you," he said, according to an arrest report.
Steele's brother, Trey King, stepped between the two knives, and Adams walked back to his apartment.
He suffers from post-traumatic stress disorder and sometimes becomes paranoid, Steele said. It doesn't help that he uses drugs from time to time. Still, Steele never saw Adams so angry before Tuesday.
She called GPD, but officers could not go inside Adams' apartment because they weren't 100 percent sure he was there, said Litchfield, the sergeant in the area. Officers knocked on the locked door and told him to come out, but he stayed inside. Eventually, the police left.
"It's a little bit of karma," Litchfield said Tuesday night. "A couple hours earlier, we were out here and he wouldn't answer the door for us. Then he falls asleep and starts a fire."
