DETROIT – A Detroit woman who fell three floors out of a burning apartment building is speaking about her experience from her hospital bed.
Antitique Harrison, 29, was one of the eleven people taken to the hospital in this fire on LaSalle, which is not far from the Lodge and the Davison on Detroit’s west side on Friday.
“There was no way out fire was coming from both ends,” said Harrison.
With all of her strength and courage, she could come up with, Harrison climbed out of her apartment’s third-floor window as smoke and fire were consuming her entire building at 3:30 a.m.
Harrison knew she had so much to hold on to that window for, her 12-year-old son Deanthony and three-year-old daughter Cotour.
“I was thinking I can’t die I am all my kids have I just lost their father last year to gun violence,” said Harrison. “I am all they have anything right now my only thing was to survive.”
Those survival instincts kicked in, but she could only hold on for so long.
“I slipped. When I woke up, I was in an ems,” said Harrison. “I remember falling. I do not remember hitting the ground it was that hard.”
Her children were not home at the time. The day before she sent them to a family member’s home to be safe – after a man was shot and killed in the building last Wednesday and she saw a man making threats that he would burn the building down.
That decision saved their lives. Hours later antique had to save her own life.
“if it wasn’t for them I would have been scared to jump. They only reason I did jump.”
Click here for Harrison’s GoFundMe.
Previous coverage: Detroit apartment fire hospitalizes 11 people, including mother of 2 who fell from 4-story window