Police in Mount Vernon, N.Y., rescued five people from a flame-engulfed home over the weekend, including a 3-year-old girl dropped from a second-story window.
The massive house fire broke out at around 2:20 a.m. Sunday on North Macquesten Parkway in the Westchester County city. Several officers on patrol raced there to find “a woman and child screaming for help from the second-floor window,” the Mount Vernon Police Department said in a statement.
Sgt. Charlie Rizzo and officer Brandi Mason ran straight inside but were immediately driven out by intense flames and heavy black smoke. Rizzo and officer Brandon Hunter-Carney then clambered up the front porch, closer to where Nathalie Jimenez was hanging out the window clutching her 3-year-old daughter.
“There was one officer that came full throttle,” Jimenez later told News12 Westchester. “He climbed up the garage, through the deck, everything, including with our friend, Anthony, and they worked hand-and-hand to catch us.”
Nonetheless, it took some convincing to get Jimenez to drop her child into officers’ waiting arms.
“We gotcha, we gotcha,” they said over and over to get the terrified mother to let go of her child, according to gripping body cam footage.
“It took all of me to be able to trust this person with my daughter,” Jimenez told ABC News. “All I could think about is, if this goes wrong, that is it.”
But drop her daughter she did, and after catching the girl, officers turned their attention to the four others trapped inside. Rizzo lifted Hunter-Carney to the porch roof, and two other officers lifted Rizzo. They then “safely removed, lowered and escorted the rest of the people trapped safely off the premises,” the department said of the “great group effort.”
Those rescued included Jimenez’s boyfriend and the toddler’s father, Andres Garita.
The family is receiving housing assistance, but has otherwise lost everything, Jimenez said, including all their clothing and supplies for school, which is set to start in a few days. She has launched an online fundraiser to help them cover the essentials they desperately need.
