Neighbor speaks on catching family jumping from house fire

Fox26 News at 9 starts now. Thank you for joining us here tonight. We start with Jillian Hartman and our top story. So there's a family of four that was hospitalized after a fire broke out at a townhouse in the Greater Heights area early this morning along Beasley Hills Lane. And authorities say a neighbor caught two children who jumped from the third story trying to escape. Jillian, fill us in on what's happening here. Yeah, so the community is calling this neighbor a hero. So John Bauer tells me that he caught both girls as they jumped from that store. Third story window, and he also helped the mom when she jumped out of that window, too. So this all happened around 1.30 in the morning, and he walked me through what happened and how he helped save the kids and the mother. I heard some popping and was in the living room, saw the front door was like sort of bright orange from the light of the fire of the car, looked out the window and I saw that it was a pretty significant fire going on and called 911. After I went out the front door, I met up with another neighbor in front of the house. We were worried that there were some people potentially inside. So we ran around the car that was on fire. After we ran around the car shortly after it did blow up and we were getting sort of to the side of the house where we started hearing some screaming, which at that point we realized it was the mom and the two daughters. There was a lot of smoke, we jumped the fence and then after jumping the fence, encouraging them to just follow my voice. First girl jumped and I caught her pretty flush to the chest and the second girl came. And the other neighbor catching her. Shortly after that, the mom came down as well. Just trying to help as best we could with the three story fall. And I think we did a pretty good job of doing that. I'm glad to hear that the girls are okay. And I know the parents are in recovery and I'm hoping for the best. And I'll be following up with that to make sure they're all right. Now we learned the mother was injured after jumping from the third story window. Officials believe the fire started in the garage after a car caught fire. The father moved the car out of the garage, but by then the fire had already spread into the home. Authorities say the father suffered severe burns while trying to help get his family out. The fire was contained to the one town home, and right now the cause remains under investigation. I'm actually in shock. To hear those details of those little girls like jumping out of a third story window. It's terrifying, it's a miracle they all made it out alive. Do we have any update on their condition? Do we know how they're doing tonight? So we know that they were all taken to the hospital. The parents remain in the hospital. That's where they're being treated. That's where they're recovering. We're told the mom has back injuries and the dad has some serious burns. And we're told at last check that the father is in critical condition, but I am told that both girls are okay. So right now, neighbors, the community, they're really rallying around. Thank you so much and shout out to the hero, the guy you spoke to. Wow.