Nov. 12--Black smoke was pouring from the roof of an apartment building as a group of young women, moving between friends' homes early Sunday morning, drove by and stopped to call 911.
"We were about to leave, thinking the firetrucks are going to be there soon and people are leaving the building," MaryLee Georgescu, 27, recalled Tuesday. "And that's when we heard the guy from the top floor. He broke the window and started screaming, 'My kids, my kids.' That's when we ran out of the car."
In the next few furious minutes, she and her three friends joined a crowd of people underneath the window as the father dropped his young son and daughter to them before he and his wife jumped.
But their older son, Ans Khan, did not make it. His body was found by firefighters in his third-floor apartment at 5731 N. Kimball Ave. in the North Park neighborhood on the Northwest Side. Eleven other people were injured, including at least five other children.
"It's not something that you ever think you're going to see in real life," Georgescu said. "That's the human thing to do. That should be the instinct to anyone."
As she and her friends ran toward the burning building, heavy smoke hit them in waves, causing fits of coughing before the wind carried it away and they could breathe again. Above them, the man who yelled out was now dangling a child by his ankle.
"You could see his wife, a little bit of her on his right side, and then he had one of his kids in front of him, so now we're seeing three people at the window," Georgescu said. "And by the time we got to the building, he was already dangling his son."
She and another woman ran back to the car for a blanket, thinking they could use it to help catch the child. But before they got back, the man let go of his young son and he fell head first. The crowd below locked their arms together and kept the boy from hitting the ground.
The next few minutes were even more of a blur.
Georgescu and her friend guided the boy away from the building and covered him up with the blanket. One of their friends who caught the boy went to move her car so it wouldn't block firefighters who were on their way.
Then the father dropped his young daughter into the crowd. A man cradled his arms and caught her. Again, the two women grabbed the child and took her away.
The father then jumped, and the man who caught his daughter broke his fall.
"I heard it first, (the) cracking. And then I saw that he had fallen on top of the guy who had caught the daughter," Georgescu said. "As they're down on the ground ... I see the mother just kinda falling and she hit the ground sideways. ... I didn't see her jump, it was completely black smoke at that point. I did see a body coming down and she had fallen sideways. She landed sideways."
There were still no sirens, but the crowd finally heard them in the distance. In the nearby courtyard, a man wearing pants but no shirt or shoes carried a woman out toward the street over his shoulders, set her down and disappeared back toward the building.
Georgescu and her friend now had the children. Their first thought was to get them warm and get their backs to the fire so they wouldn't see what was happening. Flames were licking out of the window of their apartment now.
Firefighters and paramedics started arriving not long after the children's mother fell from the building, but the two women had the children sheltered nearby. The boy was without a jacket and was missing a shoe.
"We had the blanket over them. They were shaking. Neither of them were crying, I think they were more in shock with what was going on," Georgescu said. "The little girl (told) her brother, 'You can step on my foot,' because she had her shoes on. They were shaking so much. My friend gave her jacket to the little boy and then her vest to the girl and took off one of her boots and gave it to the boy.
"My friend was asking them questions like, what school did they go to, what grade are you in. She's a third-grade teacher. So she would ask him what books are you reading and say, 'That's what I'm reading to my kids, too.'"
The girl told the women the family had been sleeping when the fire broke out and their mother woke them up.
Paramedics and firefighters arrived about four minutes after the first 911 call, and a police officer found the children and started to ask questions.
"My kids! My kids! Where are my kids?" the father screamed as paramedics took him away.
It wasn't clear to anyone yet, and the man's oldest son was missing.
"The police officer came over, we mentioned we have the kids," Georgescu said. "Glass was breaking, crashing to the ground, and fire was coming out of a top-floor window. "(The officer) started interviewing them and the little girl was saying, 'My brother, my older brother.'
"Then the dad was asking, saying, 'Where are my kids, where are my kids?' He had smiled a little bit and then it was, 'I have a third one.'
"I don't know if (the officer) had gone to one of the firefighters or what was done about that. That's really all I remember hearing," the woman recalled. "'I have a third.'
"It was a kind of quiet ride home," Georgescu said. "We were still wondering, did that really just happen?"
