"What did your son see?" Eyewitness News Reporter Darla Miles asked.
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"'Mom,' he ran in the house, 'Mom, dad there's some guy on the fire escape, trying to throw a little girl off the fire escape," said Melissa Petters, an Eyewitness.
It was a third floor fire escape to be exact.
That's where neighbors on Cauldwell Avenue in the South Bronx say they saw a 3-year-old girl and her 37-year-old mother begging for mercy.
"My husband and I ran out the door to see what was going on and you seen blood and everything everywhere," Petters said.
"I seen him grabbed him grab the baby and hang the baby out the window and she started screaming, "Please, please!" a Good Samaritan said.
The Good Samaritan doesn't want to be identified.
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He and another neighbor ran upstairs and burst into the apartment to intervene, at first throwing vases and other household items at the suspect around 8 p.m. Wednesday.
"I kicked the door open, I ran in and I went to the fire escape and I told him, 'Let her go! Let her go!' And luckily somebody else came through this side and grabbed the baby, some guys,
and they brought her down through the fire escape," he said.
"The mother was stabbed in the abdomen, and the little girl on her arm," Petters said.
The aftermath was caught on cell phone video. Witnesses say a group of men held the suspect down until police arrived.
The mother, despite her abdominal wound, remained alert, solely focused on her daughter.
"She was just telling me, 'Melly I'm scared, my baby,' and I said, 'She's right here, she's fine, she'll be safe,'" Petters said."