FORT WORTH(CBSDFW.COM) – A mother says she has a maintenance worker to thank for saving the lives of her family.
Amarisa Maturo, her two boys and their grandmother were trapped on the balcony of their apartment during a Thursday night fire. She screamed out for help as she contemplated one of the toughest decisions of her life.
“I was literally just going to drop them [down], because I figured broken bones are better than burning alive,” the mother says.
Neighbors alerted Pedro Roa, the maintenance worker at the Ambassador Apartments, and he raced to help.
“Hey somebody help me, somebody help me! Save my kids!,” Pedro recalls hearing the mother yell out.
He did not hesitate; climbing the fence just beneath the balcony to pull every one of Maturo’s family members down to safety.
CBS 11 was there as the family returned to pick up what few belongings were salvageable. Standing in front of her charred apartment, Maturo, thanked Roa and called him a real life super hero.
“My babies don’t have a scratch. They just have a memory of a super hero man who saved their lives,” she said.
The close call was not lost on her 6 year old son Jonathan.
“A man was helping us get down. We almost died,” said the child the night of the fire.
Maturo and her family, have unfortunately been here before. They lost everything in flood, and only six months ago, they were living in a shelter. The family had just started settling in when a fire in a neighboring unit, destroyed her apartment and 7 others.
They smiled as they discovered small items, like birth certificates and Halloween costumes that had been spared.
“Everything important survived! It made it. All her legal documents, made it!,” said Jacqueline Reed, Maturo’s mother.
Despite having lost most of their material possessions, they remain hopeful.
Maturo says the children will go trick-or-treating on Halloween as she plans their next step.
The Red Cross is helping a total of 18 people displaced by the fire including Maturo’s family.
Watch the report HERE››