Hoorah!
Ferreira and his family
New York Daily News: Once a Marine, always a Marine.
Just ask Matias Ferreira, who, despite already losing both legs to an improvised explosive device in Afghanistan, risked his health and safety Wednesday to save a baby from a smoking car in Queens.
Ferreira, who is getting married Friday, could have easily ignored the crash and gone home to Wantagh, L.I., to his bride-to-be and packed for their Aruba honeymoon.
But duty — and a frantic mother trapped in the driver’s seat — called. “My baby! My baby!,” the desperate driver cried after her car plowed into a median pole on Cross Bay Blvd. in Howard Beach.
Ferreira, 26, thought of his own 11-month-old daughter. He jumped out of the pickup truck he was driving and sprinted on his prosthetic legs into action with his brother and future father-in-law in tow.
“With the Marines, you are taught to be prepared and act,” said Ferreira, who was leaving his wedding rehearsal at St. Mary Gate of Heaven Parish, when he heard the crash behind him. “Instinctively you just react, you don’t freeze, and thankfully we were able to make a difference.”
While his fianceé’s dad and his brother got the mother and father out of the smoking car, Ferreira tore off a headrest, squeezed into the backseat and freed the baby from her car seat.
“We didn’t know if the car was on fire or anything else,” Ferreira said. “We knew we had to get them to safety.” Ferreira and his brother stayed with the family until firefighters and paramedics arrived. “I didn’t hear the baby crying, so I got kind of concerned,” Ferreira said. “Then I saw her open her eyes, and it kind of reassured me she was doing better.”
No information was available on the unidentified family. An FDNY spokesman said the infant was taken to Elmhurst Hospital in stable condition after the 8:30 p.m. crash.
Ferreira lost both legs from the knees down and broke his pelvis after stepping on a improvised explosive device while fighting the Taliban during a tour of duty in Afghanistan in January 2011. Recovery, rehabilitation and an advanced pair of prostheses have him living a seemingly normal life that includes sports and a motorcycle.
In August, the Marine vet began a five-year apprenticeship with New York’s Steamfitters Local 638 via the Helmets to Hardhats military transition program where he is learning to design, build and maintain mechanical operating systems in commercial, residential and industrial buildings.
Ferreira said he hopes the rescue experience shows the promise of people with disabilities. “The prostheses were the last thing on my mind,” Ferreira said of the rescue. “It doesn’t have to be a Marine. It doesn’t have to be a firefighter. It just has to be someone with a good heart.”
DCG