Mahwah cops catch 9-year-old
jumping from 3rd-floor
apartment fire
JOB WELL DONE
Mahwah Local 143 Member Thomas Solimano, 9-year-old Sofiya Doroshenko, Mahwah
PD Lieutenant Jeffrey Dino and Sergeant Brendan Mullin.
n BY LYNN ADAMO
Three Mahwah cops who caught a young girl as she leapt from a
burning third-floor apartment balcony are garnering plenty of accolades for saving her life, but to hear them tell it, 9-year-old Sofiya
Doroshenko is the real hero of the story.
“She was calm, in control and she did exactly what I said,” reported Mahwah Police officer Jeffrey Dino, one of the first on scene at the
fire. “The girl deserves all the credit; we just caught her. But it feels
good to have been in the right place at the right time.”
The blaze had already engulfed the Juniper Way condominium
complex’s top floor when Dino and members of Mahwah Local 143
arrived around 4 p.m. on Feb. 2. The fire reportedly started in a thirdfloor apartment across the hall from where Sofiya was home alone.
After scrambling to the third floor to knock on doors and evacuate
the building, the 10 or so Mahwah officers on scene before firefighters arrived were driven down to the second, then first floor by
smoke, eventually being forced outside, where they noticed a group
of residents looking and pointing toward the top floor.
There they saw Sofiya, standing on her apartment balcony, with
swirls of smoke intermittently engulfing her.
“We didn’t think we’d have time to wait,” Dino asserted.
With officers Brendan Mullin and Thomas Solimano at his side,
Dino instructed Sofiya to climb over the balcony’s railing, which she
did without protest, hanging onto the railing and facing the
building, but preparing to let go.
“I expected it to be hard convincing her to jump, but she didn’t
hesitate with anything I told her to do,” Dino recalled, sounding surprised. “She looked backward and pushed off.”
And then there was nothing to do but wait.
In what must have seemed like an eternity and nanosecond all at
once, Sofiya crashed onto the trio, assembled together in a ring 25
or so feet below the balcony.
“The three of us landed in a pile,” he recalled. “We completely
broke her fall.”
As dicey a proposition as the act might seem, the thought of any
outcome other than what transpired never entered Dino’s mind.
“We knew we wouldn’t miss; we were so dialed in on what needed
to be accomplished,” he confessed. “If I thought that (we’d miss her),
I never would’ve told her to jump.”
Once Sofiya was safely on terra firma, Solimano brought the girl
to a waiting ambulance while the other officers returned to ensure
no one else was in the building. Despite her ordeal, and having emigrated from Ukraine at the start of the current school year, Sofiya
was easily able to tell officers she was alone in her family’s apartment.
“She has a cute little accent, but she speaks English very well,”
Dino reported, adding Sofiya’s courage was exceptional.
“She never shed a tear. This kid was incredibly brave to look down
from that height and make that leap; it’s really amazing. The important thing was she trusted us and seemed very comfortable with us,”
he added.
Sofiya’s mother arrived on scene a short time later, relieved to
learn her child was uninjured.
The girl received commendations for bravery from Mahwah
Mayor Bill Laforet and the Board of Education.
As much as the officers contributed to a very happy ending, Dino
made it clear it wasn’t just the three of them ensuring things turned
out well that day.
“It was truly a team effort. Everyone was doing what they had to
do to get people out,” Dino said of the Mahwah officers on scene
before firefighters arrived. “To run into a burning building in street
clothes and without protective gear? That takes a lot of guts.” d
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FEBRUARY 2016
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