Mother Leaps From Burning Building With Toddler In Arms

By Jason Claffey

HAVERHILL, Mass. — A mother made a desperate decision to save her son when a fire broke out at their apartment last week.

Christina Simoes, 24, said the fire was blocking her door and the only way out was to jump with her 18-month-old son, Cameron, tucked in her arms.

"There just wasn’t enough time to wait for a firefighter," she told WHDH/7News. "So I grabbed Cameron and I gave him a kiss and then I jumped."

The boy suffered only a small bump on his head. Simoes was seriously hurt; she broke several vertebrae in the fall. She then crawled away from the burning building.

"I just kept telling him to run but he’s too little to know what that means," Simoes said. "I was crawling on my elbows, ashes and debris falling on me."

Simoes has had trouble moving her legs but she hopes she will be able to walk again. She said it was all worth it.

"There's no way that my life would be more valuable than his," Simoes told WCVB-TV. "All the pain, everything that I'm going to have to go through is worth it to see him be able to run around and to play."

On Mother's Day, Cameron visited his mother at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center.

"Her face lit up...she teared up," Tyler Strangman, Cameron's father, told WHDH.

A GoFundMe page has been set up to benefit the family and has already raised more than $14,000. 

Authorities said the cause of the blaze is under investigation.