MESA, Ariz. (KPHO/Gray News) – A woman rescued a toddler who was walking in the middle of an intersection.
The rescue was caught on a dash camera.
“I was scared. It wasn’t something that I expected to experience that night,” said the woman, who wishes to remain anonymous.
In the video, cars pass the toddler who is running towards oncoming traffic. The woman approaches the boy, grabs him and carries him to safety.
“At that moment. I was in shock. I was shaking the entire time,” she said.
She said she had taken a different route to pick up her daughter and saw the little boy all alone.
“My heart dropped. I was actually on the phone with my husband and hung up on him, opened the door, ran to him,” she said.
She said it was dark, and she could hear screaming but couldn’t tell where they were coming from.
KPHO interviewed the driver whose dashcam had captured the incident. The driver said she had her son in the backseat and said she screamed, thinking she would witness a little boy get “crushed.”
The woman who rescued the child said she focused on the child and didn’t consider her safety.
“I think it was just, at that moment, my priority was to save that baby, to grab that baby,” she said.
The boy can be seen jumping up and down in the video as the woman moves towards him. She said he must have thought it was a game, unaware of the danger driving towards him.
“I was talking to him gently, not screaming or yelling because kids don’t really understand that. I kept saying, ‘Baby come here, come to me.’ And he was jumping and his arms were in the air and so when I saw that white car, that’s when I grabbed him so he was closer to me now,” she said.
As she carried him to safety, she said another woman was holding the boy’s 9-month-old brother, who was found crawling on a sidewalk near their home.
Both boys were unharmed.
The woman said she does not feel like a hero.
“My husband will probably tell you this. I’ll give you the last penny I have. I work in the medical field, and I feel that’s just my nature, to be honest,” she said.
The boy’s father declined KPHO’s request to be interviewed on camera.
The father said his wife was watching over the boys, and they were napping when she stepped out momentarily.
He said she was dealing with postpartum depression and forgot to lock the door on her way out.
Child Services cleared the mom to be with their kids, according to the father, but the Maricopa County Sheriff’s Office said it is investigating and planning to submit endangerment charges.
The woman who rescued the toddler hopes the mother will receive help to overcome her health condition.
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