Shamel Lawrence + caught kids dropped from window_Hero Shamel Lawrence catches two kids dropped from second floor - This retired police officer was just killing time Feb. 23 in his New York neighborhood in the middle of the night when he heard a desperate call for help. He arrived at a burning home in time to help a trapped mother.Hero Shamel Lawrence catches two kids dropped from second floor of burning Queens home,
It was probably the most important catch Shamel Lawrence will ever make: a baby that came falling from a window during a Queens house fire Thursday.

“I was thinking, ‘wow! did I really do that?’” Lawrence, 26, said after saving the boy.

“I feel great that I'm helping someone see another day.”

Lawrence, a former cop, said he was playing around on Facebook around 3:30 a.m. when he heard yelling and went outside to find the house around the corner at Rockaway Blvd. and 144th St. on fire.


He got there just as a young mom, Sandra Goncalves, desperate to save her 9-month-old son, was dangling the infant from a smoke-choked second-floor window.

“That girl was determined,” Lawrence said. “She was screaming, ‘please, please, please take my baby!’”

Lawrence and another everyday hero - an unidentified Walgreen’s maintainence worker who was driving by in a van - teamed up to cradle their hands together.

They caught the toddler perfectly.

Then they also caught a little girl who climbed out onto the second-floor window sill and jumped.

“We didn't have time to be afraid,” said Lawrence, explaining that it all happened so fast.

“I love kids. I was just in the right place at the right time,” he said.

Firefighters from Engine 302/Ladder 155 - which happens to be located directly across the street - then saved the six adults in the house with a ladder.

All eight residents and three firefighters were treated at Jamaica Hospital for minor injuries.

Fire officials said the fire appeared to be suspicious.

Tamika Shaw, 20, who shares the second-floor apartment with her brother and who was hosting Goncalves and her kids, blamed her landlord, who is evicting her March 1.

She said the fire started suddenly on the stairs.

"We didn't have anywhere else to go but downstairs, and that's where the fire was, we were trapped," she said.

"We had to go right to the window and stick our heads out," she said. "We were yelling like crazy for help."

Shaw said she was grateful she lived so close to the fire station.

“They had to bust out the two windows and get us," she said. "I'm happy we didn't die."