A man was critically injured after he was engulfed in flames at a Brooklyn parking lot Monday, but quick-thinking good Samaritans — including a barber across the street who rushed over with a fire extinguisher — helped save the victim’s life.
The barber was cutting hair in his shop around 11 a.m. near the corner of Flushing Ave. and Varick Ave. in East Williamsburg when he spotted the victim immersed in flames.
“There was about maybe a 12-foot wall of fire,” said the barber shop owner, pointing to a stack of charred pallets in the industrial parking lot. “I grabbed my fire extinguisher and I literally said, ‘I don’t know what this will do, but let me go see’.”
The barber ran across the street, extinguisher in hand, where a bystander was already using his jacket to put out the flames engulfing the victim’s legs.
“There was a gentleman who definitely pulled that person out of the fire,” said the barber, who asked to be identified only as Matthew. “I barely did anything in comparison to that person, who definitely put themselves at risk trying to save that person’s life.”
Matthew pulled the pin on his fire extinguisher and doused the man’s lower body. Moments later, members of the FDNY arrived on the scene “and continued to give him life saving measures,” the barber said.
Medics rushed the 41-year-old victim to Wyckoff Heights Medical Center in critical but stable condition, police said.
“You see somebody on fire, you put it out,” said the fast-acting barber. “I would hope somebody would do the same for me.”
The Fire Marshal will determine the cause of the blaze.
