An Inverness man, vacationing in Kissimmee, catches a 2-year-old as she falls from the third-floor walkway of a resort.
By JIM ROSS
Published March 25, 2004
Alan Burns was enjoying a weekend getaway at a Kissimmee resort, sitting poolside, reading a book, when he heard a woman screaming about a baby.
Burns instinctively looked to the pool. No baby.
He peered around the Dorsan Suites resort until he saw the object of the woman's horror.
From the third floor, a toddler was hanging from a railing on an outdoor walkway.
"Initially, I thought it was her child," Burns said. It wasn't.
The two ran under the child, and the woman began trying to reach her, hoping to rescue the toddler. Burns was trying to help when things suddenly changed course.
"I'm looking up," he said, "and the kid lets go."
Burns moved the woman aside and reached out for the child.
"I pretty much caught her," he said. The momentum carried his arms, and the child, into a bush.
The girl, age 2, had a bump and some scratches but otherwise was fine. So was Burns, except for the shock of it all.
"I tell you, my heart was pounding for about an hour afterward," the Inverness man said this week.
The incident occurred about noon Saturday as Burns, 43, was enjoying a getaway with friends from Inverness Moose Lodge 2112.
Some women ran over to comfort the baby, who started crying after the momentary shock of her tumble wore off.
Burns said the girl was wearing only a diaper. Her mother came by several minutes later. It's unclear how the child became separated from her mother.
The Osceola County Sheriff's Office investigated. Deputy Al DeArmas, a spokesman for that agency, said the investigating deputies found that the child's mother, Rosa Figueroa, changed her story several times when asked how she had become separated from the child.
Figueroa, 40, of Kissimmee, eventually was arrested on a charge of child neglect without great harm. She posted $1,000 bail Sunday and was released from the Osceola County jail. She could not be reached for comment Wednesday.
According to the Florida Department of Law Enforcement, Figueroa was arrested on a drug possession charge in 1986 and for an alleged battery in 1991. Both cases originated in Miami-Dade County. The disposition of those cases was not known late Wednesday.
Paramedics checked the child and, out of an abundance of caution, brought her to Florida Hospital Kissimmee, DeArmas said. Law officers also called the Department of Children and Families to report what happened.
"I just happened to be at the right place at the right time," said Burns, who operates a lawn service and stump grinding business called Just Stumps in Citrus County. His own children are ages 18 and 21.
He credits the woman who first noticed the toddler.
"If she hadn't seen the kid," he said, "I wouldn't even have known it."
And the book Burns was reading when this whole whirlwind started? Bill O'Reilly's Who's Looking Out For You?
