NEW YORK (AP):
A MOTHER trapped in a burning third-floor apartment prayed and then dropped her 1-month-old son out a window to the crowd below. The infant was caught safely by a man who plays catcher for his employer's baseball team.
The rescuer gave the baby mouth-to-mouth resuscitation - a skill he picked up two decades ago as a teenage lifeguard - and the mother was rescued by firefighters. Both were treated at a hospital and released.
Tracinda Foxe, 30, was cornered by smoke and flames in the Bronx apartment on Wednesday when she went to the window with son Eric Guzman.
"I said, 'God, please save my son'," Foxe told the Daily News in yesterday's editions. "I prayed that someone would catch him and save his life."
Felix Vazquez, 39, a Housing Authority supervisor, opened his arms and snared the baby.
"I didn't think," said Vazquez, a father of three. "I just reacted."
Moments later, firefighters D.J. Martin and Bobby Eustace burst into the burning apartment, found a hysterical Foxe and gave her an oxygen mask.
