Florida

Watch a Florida deputy climb balconies to rescue a 1-year-old from a burning building

A Florida deputy was caught on camera climbing balconies to rescue a 1-year-old girl trapped on the third floor of a burning building.

Bodycam footage by the Orange County Sheriff Office shows a mom and her baby trapped on the third-floor balcony of an apartment in Orlando on Saturday. The mom can be heard shouting for help as smoke from the fire fills the sky.

The sheriff’s office said flames were coming out of the apartment and “due to the imminent danger,” a deputy took matters into his own hands.

“Hold on, Hold on, Hold on, I’m coming,” Deputy William Puzynski shouts. Bodycam footage from Puzynski’s outer ballistic vest, which he took off and left on the ground as it continued recording, shows him climbing up to the second-floor balcony.

“Give me your baby! We’re coming, hand me your baby!” Puzynski shouts.

As the mom pleads for help, holding on to her crying baby, Puzynski realizes he needs to get closer and climbs onto the balcony’s railing. He’s now close enough for the mother to hand the girl to him. Puzynski then carefully gets back into the second-floor balcony and passes the diaper-wrapped baby to other deputies on the ground.

Fire crews then rescued the mother and grandmother from the apartment using a ladder, the sheriff’s office said. Other residents got out of the building safely. No one was injured.

Michelle Marchante
Miami Herald
Michelle Marchante covers the pulse of healthcare in South Florida and also the City of Coral Gables. Before that, she covered the COVID-19 pandemic, hurricanes, crime, education, entertainment and other topics in South Florida for the Herald as a breaking news reporter. She recently won first place in the health reporting category in the 2025 Sunshine State Awards for her coverage of Steward Health’s bankruptcy. An investigative series about the abrupt closure of a Miami heart transplant program led Michelle and her colleagues to be recognized as finalists in two 2024 Florida Sunshine State Award categories. She also won second place in the 73rd annual Green Eyeshade Awards for her consumer-focused healthcare stories and was part of the team of reporters who won a 2022 Pulitzer Prize for the Miami Herald’s breaking news coverage of the Surfside building collapse. Michelle graduated with honors from Florida International University and was a 2025 National Press Foundation Covering Workplace Mental Health fellow and a 2020-2021 Poynter-Koch Media & Journalism fellow.  Support my work with a digital subscription
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