DETROIT (WXYZ) — When an apartment building in Detroit went up in flames Friday, Anitique Harrison knew she had to get out. Her children lost their dad last year, and she couldn't bear the thought of them losing her too.
"Very terrifying. All I can think of is my kids. I'm all they got. They just lost their father. And for me to be gone was too much," said Anitique.
And that's why Anitique knew she had to find a way to survive the fire that raced through her apartment building on La Salle early Friday morning. By the time residents realized there was a fire, smoke and flames were filling the hallways, and stairways were on fire.
"There was no way out but the windows that was in my apartment," she said.
Anitique tried to push a bed out of her fourth floor window to land on but it wouldn't fit, so she climbed outside the window to try to hang on.
"I was thinking I'm about to die because I was falling. But then I was thinking like, 'god, don't let me die, cause [I'm] all my kids have.' So I couldn't just give up. I couldn't give up," said Anitique.
Firefighters were quick to arrive but almost a dozen people needed rescuing from windows.
"It was other people screaming, also trying to get out the windows. So he went on the side of the building. By that time, I couldn't hold on no more. And I fell," she said.
Anitique fractured her spine, and suffered broken bones in her ankle and leg. And she and so many other people believe the fire was intentionally set as some sort of retaliation for the killing of a young man two days earlier. He was visiting someone when he was shot in a stairwell during a dispute he had nothing to do with.
"I knew they was hurt the way they were out there screaming and stuff. But everybody say they'll get retaliation and stuff like that. But I never thought ... I thought they would look and see the bigger picture, like my kids weren't the only kids in that building. Other people had kids. I would think they would care about the kids at least, but no," said Anitique.
She's now started a GoFundMe to help her and her children restart their lives. And she's thankful she had her kids stay with a relative after loved ones of the shooting victim allegedly made those threats.
She said if she hadn't taken those kids out of there, "we would be dead. All three of us, because I wouldn't have been able to get them out. We would have died because I wouldn't have been able to jump and leave them and I wouldn't have been able to throw them down because it was too far."
Anyone involved in the fire who is in need of help from the Red Cross should call 1-800-Red-Cross.
