Joy and sorrow amid boy’s rescue from rubble, mom’s death
His cries from the heap of what had been a 12-story condo tower punctuated the possibility of hope that there too could be more survivors, survivors like him.
Jonah Handler, 15, and his mother Stacie Fang, 54, were among those who seemingly free fell from their homes early Thursday — oblivious that their condo tower collapsed while they slept.
Handler cried out. He slipped his arm from two-story-high rubble of everything that makes up a home beyond the concrete and
the drywall.
A man visiting from Arizona was walking his dog when he heard the teen’s cries.
“Keep yelling so I can follow your voice,” said Nicholas Balboa, 31. He soon saw a hand waving from the rubble.
The boy kept asking about his mom, who he lived with on the 10th floor. Balboa and a stranger tried desperately to clear away the rubble surrounding Handler, but it was too heavy.
“I’ll be right back. I’m going to get help,” Balboa said, trying to comfort the boy.
“Please don’t leave me, please don’t leave me,” the boy pleaded.
Handler, barefoot and clad in pajamas, was hoisted over a rescue worker’s shoulder and carried to a gurney where he was strapped in and gingerly carted down the debris field.
“He was absolutely terrified. The sheer terror in his voice, that fact that his mother, that he can’t find her,” said Balboa.
Fang too was rescued. But she died of her injuries.
Handler has no idea what happened to his mother, her sister Virginia Borges told The Washington Post. Monsignor Edward Pace High School in Miami Gardens, where Handler attends, said he was being treated in the hospital Friday.
Fang was the first of what is expected to be many victims identified by the Miami-Dade Medical Examiner’s Office. Nearly 160 people were still missing as of 6 p.m. Friday.
“There are no words to describe the tragic loss of our beloved Stacie,” members of her family said in a statement. They said they were deeply grateful to those who had reached out and that “the many heartfelt words of encouragement and love have served as a much needed source of strength during this devastating time.”
The family requested privacy “on behalf of Stacie’s son, Jonah,” saying it needed time to “to grieve and to try to help each other heal.”
Balboa said he was heartbroken to learn of Fang’s death.
“I lost my mom recently, so I know how it’s going to be,” he said.