A Shout Amid Flames: 'Can Somebody Catch My Baby?'

3 injured in 'brutal' Dallas apartment fire
By Arden Dier,  Newser Staff
Posted Nov 22, 2018 2:00 PM CST

Around 40 Dallas residents are homeless for Thanksgiving but thankful to be alive after what the Dallas Morning News describes as a "brutal" fire at an apartment complex. Three people including a firefighter were injured Wednesday, per NBC DFW, though rescuers and residents likely prevented further calamity. They banged on doors around 7am as flames erupted from the upper floor of one of the three-story Meadows at Ferguson apartment buildings in Dallas' northeast. At one point, a 1-year-old girl was dropped out of a window, safely landing in the arms of passerby Byron Campbell. "The young mother was holding her baby and yelling, 'Can somebody catch my baby?'" he tells the Morning News. "I just said, 'Trust me, I'll catch her!'"

"I didn't know … if that was going to be the last time I was holding my child," mother Shuntara Thomas tells WFAA. She ended up jumping to safety along with the child's father, who needed 22 stitches after breaking their unit's windows. Three others also jumped, helped by first-floor residents who dragged out mattresses, per NBC DFW. "I had just got that big, thick mattress, but I was glad to get it used that way," says one such resident. He likely has little to his name now. The 24-unit complex was ruled structurally unsafe and turned to rubble, along with most of the residents' belongings, before the day was up. Thomas sees the bright side, however. "My child gets to live another day because of [Campbell]," she says. (More Dallas stories.)

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