A man running for his life to escape the horrific Bronx apartment blaze has been hailed as a hero after he stopped to help a desperate mother and rushed her young daughter to safety.
Fatima Wood said she and her two kids were approached by a neighbor they had never met before as they struggled to escape their 19-story apartment building as it became engulfed by smoke and flames.
Recalling the terror, Wood told NBC4 that she had almost given up hope when he offered to help them make it down from the ninth floor.
The heroic stranger — later identified as Mahamed Keita — quickly grabbed Wood’s 3-year-old daughter Kween and continued running down the stairs.
“As soon as I got down, the kid was cold, she didn’t have enough clothes. So I took off my jacket and I wrapped her in my jacket,” Keita told the outlet.
“I was sitting down, shaking. People were just going through, they couldn’t breathe, they were performing CPR, cardiac arrest. I’ve never seen something like it, so I was just shaking the whole time.”
Fatima Wood said she and her two kids were approached by a neighbor as they struggled to escape the burning building. WNBCThe neighbor and little girl were already in an ambulance en route to St. Barnabas Hospital before Wood and her other child made it out of the building.
Wood, who managed to finally escape with the help of firefighters, said she was reunited with her daughter — and the man who rescued her — on Sunday night when they were released from the hospital.
“I cried all day, even when we got here [to the hospital] and we finally see her, I was still crying because it’s so traumatizing,” Wood said of her daughter.
The heroic stranger was later identified as Mahamed Keita. WNBCAsked what could have happened if the stranger hadn’t stepped in, Wood said: “Only God knows. It could’ve been way worse.”
Keita added: “I was just trying to do the right thing. Everybody was struggling, lots of people lost their lives, I was just trying to do the right thing.”
At least 19 people — including nine children — were killed in the five-alarm blaze, which has been blamed on a malfunctioning space heater.
Mahamed Keita took Fatima Wood’s 3-year-old daughter Kween down the stairs and to the hospital. Tanisha Ashe via REUTERS
“I was just trying to do the right thing. Everybody was struggling,” Mahamed Keita said. CitizenThe blaze broke out just before 11 a.m. and was knocked down about an hour later — but not before what a shaken Mayor Eric Adams called “a horrific, horrific painful moment for the city of New York.”
In addition to the dead, at least 32 more people sustained life-threatening injuries, officials said.
