Mother drops child from burning building into arms of stranger

STONE MOUNTAIN, Ga.,None — A baby survived a fire after being tossed from the burning building on Wednesday.

The fire started around 6:45 p.m. in a ground-floor apartment on Three Oaks Bend in Stone Mountain.

"I caught the baby coming out of the window," Lawrence Fort told Channel 2’s Michael Buczyner.

Fort said moments after a kitchen fire broke out in his apartment, he headed for his front door and started pounding on his neighbor's doors to alert them.

"They were hollering, saying, ‘It's a fire,’" neighbor Rene Campbell said.

On the third floor, a family of three, including a 6-month-old and 3-year-old, were trapped in the smoke-filled building. Fort said he grabbed a jacket and told the mother to drop her baby into his arms.

"I just told her to drop the baby, and I promised her I'd catch it, so I had to catch the baby," Fort said.

Mother Ashley Brown told Channel 2's Erin Coleman that dropping her children into the arms of a total stranger was the most difficult decision of her life.

"I tried to get my body out as far as I could out the window. I held him gently and I dropped him gently and he landed just fine. This guy had a coat laying in his arms and one of my neighbors was that lives across from us was behind him in case something would happen.

http://bcove.me/ltde15g9

Cell phone video showed the mother of the baby tied a rope to the window and lowered the 3-year-old and herself.

"It was the most amazing thing. It caught me for a second. We catch her and she says, ‘Thank you,’" DeKalb Police Officer Miguel Anchundia said.

Poore said she was impressed by all of the survival stories.

"I saw people climbing down like they were Spiderman. I'm thankful everyone got out," she said.

Police also helped two other women trapped in another apartment on the third floor.

"We got on their shoulders and then, we had to come down on their shoulders,” Campbell said.

A cat named Kat survived after being tossed from a third-floor window. Police said four people were taken to the hospital in stable condition.

WSBTV