The Associated Press
BINGHAMTON, N.Y. ― A police officer is credited with saving lives after catching a baby dropped from a second-floor window during an early morning fire that destroyed a Binghamton house.
Police Chief Joe Zituski says officers were on patrol when they smelled smoke around 3:30 a.m. and found a four-family home on fire.
One woman dropped her 15-month-old child out of a second-floor window before she jumped herself. Zituski says the drop was probably 20 or 30 feet.
Patrolman Connor Heslin caught the child and he and other officers rescued several other residents before the fire department arrived. A 12-year-old boy was pulled from the house by firefighters and taken to a hospital in critical condition.
Zituski says it took more than 90 minutes to put out the fire.