Former university wide receiver and retired U.S. Marine is being hailed as a hero after helping to rescue a baby thrown from an apartment in the third floor that was on fire over the weekend.
Phillip Blanks, 28, was captured on a heart-stopping video dive to catch the 3-year-old boy as he was dropped from the balcony of the burning third-floor apartment in Phoenix , Arizona, Friday, July 3, 2020.
“People were screaming, ‘There are kids up there’ and to throw the kids down,” Blanks, who was a wide receiver at Kalamazoo Central High School in Michigan and later joined the Marines, told WWMT. “I saw another guy was standing there ready to catch the boy, but he didn’t look like he was going to do it, so I stepped in front of him.”
Blanks said he was heading for a walk with a friend who lived next door to the apartment when he heard the crying and ran quickly into the building to capture a young child he said was “twirling like a helicopter” as he fell through the air.
The former college wide receiver grabbed the boy and took him to safety, reported the news outlet. The child and his 8-year-old sister sustained serious injuries but their 30-year-old mother died in the blaze, officials told Arizona Republic.
See video below:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rpqVAWTzJdo