Baseball player catches baby mother dropped from building
Published 9:00 pm Thursday, December 15, 2005
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 hospital and released.
Tracinda Foxe, 30, was cornered by smoke and flames in her Bronx apartment on Wednesday when she went to the window with her son, Eric Guzman.
“I said, ‘God, please save my son,’” Foxe told the Daily News for Thursday editions. “I prayed that someone would catch him and save his life.”
Felix Vazquez, 39, a New York Housing Authority supervisor, opened his arms and caught 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.
