Milwaukee:
The off-duty firefighters and neighbours who helped pull a four-year-old boy from a burning vehicle deserve more gratitude than words can express, the boy's father said on Tuesday.
In a dramatic scene caught on amateur video, about a dozen people converged to help save the driver, 32-year-old Angela Baldessari, and her 2-year-old daughter, Beverly Harper, after their SUV, swerved and crashed into a tree on Sunday.
The vehicle immediately caught fire.
Amid plumes of thick black smoke, Baldessari, wife of father James Harper, handed her daughter to bystanders through the top of the SUV.
Baldessari escaped through the windshield after rescuers smashed it open, but 4-year-old David Harper was still trapped inside as flames spread through the vehicle.
Firefighters Joel and John Rechlitz, along with neighbours and off-duty police Lieutenant Mark Wroblewski, were directed to the scene of the crash by phone calls from their wives.
They used a knife to cut the car seat's restraints and pull the boy to safety.
Once David was freed the rescuers said he was doused with a garden hose.
The Rechlitz brothers, who suffered burns to their hands and forearms, were among the "brave" rescuers, said father James Harper.
Harper said he couldn't express enough gratitude for the rescue act.
"There are angels all around us," Harper said during a news conference.
Four-year-old David Harper, known to his family as 'DJ', was upgraded to serious but stable condition on Tuesday morning at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, in the Milwaukee suburb of Wauwatosa.
In a dramatic scene caught on amateur video, about a dozen people converged to help save the driver, 32-year-old Angela Baldessari, and her 2-year-old daughter, Beverly Harper, after their SUV, swerved and crashed into a tree on Sunday.
The vehicle immediately caught fire.
Amid plumes of thick black smoke, Baldessari, wife of father James Harper, handed her daughter to bystanders through the top of the SUV.
Baldessari escaped through the windshield after rescuers smashed it open, but 4-year-old David Harper was still trapped inside as flames spread through the vehicle.
Firefighters Joel and John Rechlitz, along with neighbours and off-duty police Lieutenant Mark Wroblewski, were directed to the scene of the crash by phone calls from their wives.
They used a knife to cut the car seat's restraints and pull the boy to safety.
Once David was freed the rescuers said he was doused with a garden hose.
The Rechlitz brothers, who suffered burns to their hands and forearms, were among the "brave" rescuers, said father James Harper.
Harper said he couldn't express enough gratitude for the rescue act.
"There are angels all around us," Harper said during a news conference.
Four-year-old David Harper, known to his family as 'DJ', was upgraded to serious but stable condition on Tuesday morning at Children's Hospital of Wisconsin, in the Milwaukee suburb of Wauwatosa.
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