A Stamford man remains in the hospital with a broken neck and second- and third-degree burns after escaping his burning home from a second-story window Saturday, according to Stamford’s fire chief.

On Monday, investigators returned to 17 Clinton Ave. to try and determine why flames ripped through the row house, gutting the inside and leaving one person fighting for his life. Fire crews got the call at 5:15 a.m. Saturday morning and responded to the end unit of a three-story row house building.

Jean Gabriel, co-owner of Soul Tasty Restaurant next to the row house building, saw the smoke before fire crews arrived.

“I come down here every morning at like 5 o’clock in the morning to start my day,” Gabriel said, adding that it was instinct for him to run over and see if he could help.

That's when he learned someone was still inside.

“I started to kick the door in until I actually got it open. I started yelling, ‘Hey, is anybody in there? Is anybody in there?’” Gabriel recalled.

Gabriel told News 12 the smoke was too thick for him to go in any further, so he went to the side of the building and saw the person hanging from a window.

“All we could do is wait for the fire people to come,” Gabriel said.

Stamford fire chief Rex Morris said the first crews got on scene quickly.

“The time of notification to time of arrival was three minutes, and they were faced with a heavy body of fire,” Morris stated.

Morris said the man who needed to be rescued was initially on the third floor and tried to get down the stairs, but the fire prevented him from getting beyond the second floor, so he attempted to escape out a window there. When crews arrived, they tried to get a ladder into position for him.

“They told him to wait, but he couldn't hold on, so he ended up dropping,” Gabriel recalled.

Morris said the man was rushed to the hospital with life-threatening injuries but survived.

“It's pretty crazy. It's pretty scary. We hope he's OK,” said neighbor Marcus Jones.

Jones was among those woken by the sirens Saturday.

“Looked out the window from upstairs and there were at least seven, eight firetrucks, several ambulances, a ton of smoke billowing out,” Jones told News 12. “It was really really smoky.”

Morris said the fire was under control in about 45 minutes and said it was amazing that the flames were limited to that row house and didn’t spread to the others in the building.

“It’s all wood inside,” Morris said. “They did such a good job suppressing that fire.”

Morris said it’s unclear if the row house had smoke detectors, but he wants to remind the public that the fire department offers free smoke detectors and installation to all community members.

The Fire Marshal’s Office said the cause of the fire remains under investigation. The American Red Cross said it’s helping the family who lives there since the home is uninhabitable.