By Kerry Burke, Elizabeth Keogh
New York Daily News
NEW YORK — A teenager horsing around with a friend in Queens was impaled when he stumbled into a wrought iron fence — and then freed by a quick-thinking group of New York’s bravest before being rushed to the hospital, likely saving his life.
“This is an example of what we do every day,” FDNY Assistant Chief of Operations John Sarrocco said at a news conference after the frightening fall. “We don’t only put out fires.”
The 15-year-old boy was heading home from school, and roughhousing with a friend on Himrod St. near Tonsor St. in Ridgewood when he stumbled into the fence, officials said at the news conference.
The teen’s friend fell on top of him, pushing the boy’s leg into a sharp spire of the fence. Members of the FDNY were called to the residential block and immediately began working to free the teen’s leg from the fence.
Firefighter Jason Shoemaker of FDNY Rescue 4 used a bandsaw to cut through three vertical bars and the horizontal top piece of the fence — preventing further injury by carefully keeping the sections intact to transport the boy and fence together to the hospital.
“We all worked together as a team [and] we passed him off to EMS,” said Shoemaker. “It’s all teamwork here.”
Medics rushed the teen to Bellevue Hospital, where he was in stable condition.
“The training, the dedication that goes on each and every day with this fire department and our specialized units, we were able to extricate this child from the fence and save his life,” Sarrocco said. “It just goes to a testament to what we do on a daily basis in the FDNY.”
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