Frightening moment mother drops kids from window during fire into officers' arms

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By Minyvonne Burke

Police body camera video shows the heroic moment four Iowa officers rescued three children from a fire in an Iowa apartment building after instructing their mother to drop them from a third-floor window.

The video was released by the Des Moines Police Department praising officers Cole Johnson, Craig Vasquez, Tyler Kelley, and Casey Sanders for their quick-thinking action that saved the family-of-four during a Tuesday morning blaze.

In the footage, one officer tells the mother, identified by NBC 13 as O’Sheana Harrison, to get her children “by the window.” The outlet reports that the children are under the age of 3.

From left, Officers Cole Johnson, Craig Vasquez, Tyler Kelley, and Casey Sanders.De Moines Police Dept.

The Des Moines Police Department said officers responded to the inferno to assist the fire department. Officers told Harrison to drop her kids out the window because heavy smoke prevented them from getting to the third floor, where her apartment was.

“Send them down. I got them,” an officer says in the video.

Harrison then drops the first child out the window and into the officer’s arms. The officer tells the child, who is crying, to stand next to him and then instructs Harrison to drop the second child.

“Keep going,” he says. “I got them, I got them. Go!”

The video shows the policeman catching the second child as several other officers come over to help. After the third child is safely dropped from the window, an officer tells Harrison to “stay on the edge” and yells for someone to bring a ladder.

“We got to get a ladder over here quick,” the officer yells. “We got somebody trapped. We got the kids.”

Harrison screams for them to hurry and asks the officer to cover her child up with a blanket. In the video, flames can be seen shooting out of the side of the building.

The video ends before it shows officers rescuing Harrison, but she also made it out of the building safely.

“I can’t say thank you enough to them,” Harrison told NBC 13. “I owe them the world, because they saved my world.”

source: nbcnews.com