The accident at a building happened along 18th Avenue in Bensonhurst. The child was visiting her grandmother.
"I don't feel like hero or anything like that. Anybody would step in like that," said Qing Chen, the rescuer.
He might not want to be called a hero, but Qing Chen is being hailed one.
Mr. Chen was working at Pure Health Pharmacy in Bensonhurst; just before 2 p.m. Friday, when he looked out of the window and saw a baby on the awning of the computer store across the street.
"She was crawling back and forth and to the edge she was about to fall off. And that's when we yelled at her and crawled back to where the letter 'O' was and she sat there. We screamed at her said 'Don't move,' and (she) started crying and she just sat there," Chen said.
Exclusive surveillance video shows Chen sprinting across the street to help.
Other Good Samaritans put up a ladder to try to grab the 18-month-old, but it wasn't enough because she was out of reach, a good 15 feet off the ground.
"My boss actually got on top with the orange shirt and he put his hand up just in case the baby rolled over he would catch her," said Amy Vaccaro, a witness.
So Chen ran up to the child's apartment and banged on the door.
Her mother answered.
"I said, 'Where's your baby?' She was in shock. And I was like, 'Your baby is outside and she's about to fall off of the roof,'" Chen said.
Witnesses believe the baby climbed out of the second floor window of her family's apartment.
A bag of baby wipes shows the trail she probably took.
The child then crawled from the roof of the building onto the awning; it's not clear how long she was there.
A woman at the family's apartment had very little to say to Eyewitness News.
"How is the baby doing?" Eyewitness News asked.
"She's good," the woman answered.
"Do you know what happened?" Eyewitness News asked.
"I'm sorry," the woman said as she shut the door.
Residents have so many questions like, where were the window guards and who was supposed to be watching this child?
But Qing Chen says right now all he wants to do his hold his 8-month-old daughter Samantha, as he thinks how close the baby he rescued came to falling.
"When I grabbed her I almost came to tears because I have a baby that big and that old," Chen said.
Fire officials said the child was taken to Maimonides Medical Center and is listed in stable condition.
