Posted on 12/15/2005 9:34:34 PM PST by cyborg
Catch of his life: Trapped by fire, mom drops baby from window to baseball player
ASSOCIATED PRESS
5:58 a.m. December 15, 2005
Associated Press This image from video released by the New York Fire Department shows a crowd gathered by an apartment building in the Bronx before a baby was caught by a Housing Authority supervisor during a fire. NEW YORK – A mother trapped in a burning third-floor apartment prayed and then dropped her 1-month-old son out a window to the crowd below. The infant was caught safely by a man who plays catcher for his employer's baseball team.
The rescuer gave the baby mouth-to-mouth resuscitation – a skill he picked up two decades ago as a teenage lifeguard – and the mother was rescued by firefighters. Both were treated at a hopsital and released.
Video * Catch of his life. Cable-DSL / 56k The FREE RealPlayer plug-in is necessary to play RealMedia.
Tracinda Foxe, 30, was cornered by smoke and flames in the Bronx apartment on Wednesday when she went to the window with son Eric Guzman.
"I said, 'God, please save my son,'" Foxe told the Daily News in Thursday editions. "I prayed that someone would catch him and save his life."
Felix Vazquez, 39, a Housing Authority supervisor, opened his arms and snared the baby.
"I didn't think," said Vazquez, a father of three. "I just reacted."
Moments later, firefighters D.J. Martin and Bobby Eustace burst into the burning apartment, found a hysterical Foxe and gave her an oxygen mask.
(Excerpt) Read more at signonsandiego.com ...
Great story!
I couldn't get the video to work on my computer, but the photo alone is amazing.
saw it on fox this morning several times.... The man has some skills... :)
The NFL will be calling him to do punt return work... :)
NOT a catch I could have made.
Touchdown,extraordinairrrrre.
Beautiful.
For all time.
doubt I could have caught the baby myself...one happy story from the media. Good night!
We saw it on Fox News later. Awesome!
Right man at the right time and the good Lord used him. Prayer answered! Praise HIS name.
I hope the hero and baby get to know each other and meet many times over the coming decades.
The hands of God were at work here.
One for the books!
There was no way that gentleman was going to miss that child, he would have died trying...you can see it in his face. That, my Friends, was this man's "manifest destiny"....
Saw this on the late local evening news tonite. They said the fellow that caught the baby was the catcher for the Housing Authority baseball team! Amazing video.
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