The infant held outside a fifth-story window during a Bronx apartment fire escaped the blaze unscathed. "My baby is doing fine," said Saschelle Hewitt, whose cousin dangled her 7-month-old daughter Zaniyah Alexander out a window so the child wouldn't suffocate. "She's the only one without bumps and bruises."
The child's mother spoke with the Daily News—and posed photos with her baby!—and told the tabloid that her cousin did the right thing when the fire erupted out inside their Pelham Parkway Houses apartment on Monday. "She put her through the window because she couldn't breathe in that black stuff," Hewitt, 22, said. "She saved Zaniyah's life."
Thick smoke had trapped Hewitt, her two-year-old daughter Neveah, Zaniyah, and her 18-year-old cousin Vanessa Scott by a window. "It was pitch black," Hewitt said. "We started breaking the windows with our hands so we could breathe and scream for help because no one could find their phones." Scott told the tabloid she tried to stay calm. "I was screaming for help and trying not to panic. I thought the fire was coming closer to me ... I don't think she would be here if I didn't put her out of the window," she said. "It was just too much smoke."
The baby's father, Michel Alexander, jumped out of a different window in the apartment and remains hospitalized for broken bones. According to fire department officials, the blaze was caused by a child playing with fire.
