A wheelchair-bound mom coaxed her frightened toddler out of their smoky Manhattan apartment to safety yesterday after a faulty air conditioner exploded in flames.
“I was in my wheelchair in the living room and my son was playing with a toy on the floor when I heard a crackling sound,” said Wilma Berito, 37, who has cerebral palsy.
“I saw smoke and then flames,” she said.
Berito realized in a panic that she was too far away to reach her cellphone in the bedroom of the 10th-floor apartment on 104th Street in East Harlem.
As the flames licked the wall and spread to the sofa at about 8:20 a.m., she made a split-second decision to get her son, Justin, 4, out of harm’s way.
Shielding him so he wouldn’t see the encroaching flames, she leaned over her wheelchair and pulled the bewildered boy to his feet.
“Come, come, let’s go now,” she calmly told him, prodding him toward the door.