IMPD officers share their account of fire rescue caught on body camera
INDIANAPOLIS (WISH) — Officers with the Indianapolis Metropolitan Police Department on Monday recounted the rescue of a woman and her two children from a burning apartment building.
The dramatic early-morning rescue on April 11 was caught on the officers’ body cameras.
The cameras captured the woman as she yelled to IMPD Officer Wally Carroll, who was standing below her second-story window: “Please help! I can’t breathe! I’ve got my kids in here!”
“Okay, where they at?” Caroll called back.
“They’re right here in my bed!” the woman replied. She and her children, ages two and three, were trapped in their apartment as the building burned.
Carroll started coming up with a plan.
“Just figuring out any way I could help her. I knew fire was in the front so I couldn’t go through the front. I can’t jump that high to the window, so I figured any game plan could be thrown into action to help her out,” Caroll said.
Carroll called for backup and Officers Aaron Laird and Michael Hupp soon met him at the back of the apartment building. They immediately put together a plan to get the woman and her children to safety.
“By the time I had arrived around back, I heard Officer Carroll say, ‘Can you toss them down to us?’ [He asked] their ages to see if we were going to be able to catch them or not,” Laird said.
Carroll, Hupp, and Laird positioned themselves under the window as the mother dropped her children to safety.
“At that point, it was any means to keep them safe, even if that meant it injured one of us,” Laird said. “All that mattered was keeping them safe, at that point.”
After her children were safe, the mother was able to jump from the building and into the arms of the waiting police officers.
“We genuinely want to help people when they are in need, whether they are in need for that, or they’re out of gas, or they’ve been in a car accident,” Laird said. “A lot of times, when police are called or anyone calls 911, it’s on the worst day of their life and we have to remember that.”
Officers say it was the quick thinking by everyone that made sure the family is together and safe.