As flames billowed up from the floor below her, an 11-year-old girl threw her little brother to safety on Thursday, dropping the three-year-old into the arms of four men below the fire escape where she was trapped.
The fire department had not yet arrived when Janixia Soto and her brother Walter clambered out to the fire escape of their Prospect Park South second floor apartment with their dog shortly before 6 a.m., an FDNY spokesman told DNAinfo. With the ladder jammed and smoke pouring out of the window, Soto tossed the boy out of harm’s way.Firefighters arrived shortly thereafter and rescued Janixia and her mother Michelle, who had gone back into the apartment to get the family cat, to safety.
It took 100 firefighters to control the blaze, which started in a grocery store on the first floor.
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