A Nigerian woman and her three children trapped on the fourth
storey of a burning building in Pyeongtaek, South Korea, miraculously
survived without injuries.The 30-year-old
woman, identified as Mrs Precious Enyioko,drew the attention
of onlookers by dangling her baby through the
window . She held out her
terrified one-year-old infant whose legs were kicking furiously before
dropping her to the crowd. But this was after Airmen persuaded her to
throw the kids from the building.
CNN reports that she succeeded in throwing her three-year-old child.then another four-year-old,
before she leaped from the window, the only escape route.Remarkably, all survived without injury. United States Air
Force Master, Sgt. Daniel Raimondo, told CNN he was walking to dinner at
the weekend when he saw clouds of smoke and set off in that direction.
On assessing the scene, Raimondo and a colleague discussed how to help and resolved to get some blankets from a nearby store.
They corralled others to help hold the blankets, then tried to
persuade the mother to drop her children to safety. First, Sgt. Melanie
Scott said the woman was understandably reluctant to let go of her
children.
“You could tell she was scared. She didn’t want to.”
Raimondo said that the “last baby was the most difficult in my eyes, she just wouldn’t let her go for some reason.”
He said he repeatedly begged the mother:
“Please just throw the baby down!””I remember her screaming (at) the
baby, ‘I love you, I love you. …’ Next thing you know she dropped the
baby.”
By this time, the mother had to jump. “The smoke and
the fire was just horrendous,” Raimondo said. “You could barely even see
her at that point.” The woman fell more heavily than the children and
hit the ground beneath the blanket, but someone had had the foresight to
put cushions underneath it,” he said.
“We carried her into a safe location into a salon,” he said. “I just
kept yelling and talking to her, ‘You’re alive! You’re alive!’. She flew
like Supergirl.”
On Monday, the rescued family met the people who saved their lives and thanked them.
“I don’t know how I would explain my thanks,” said the children’s father, Prince Enyioko.
“I was so surprised, I see the people gathering here to rescue my family, especially the military.”
Raimondo said he sat with the first child to be rescued in the
aftermath Saturday and held her while her mother, suffering from smoke
inhalation, sat in shock. “I let her know that she was very brave and
she flew like Supergirl. She just smiled,” he said. “It was an emotional
experience. The good news is they made it through alive.”