A Dallas man saved a baby from a burning apartment building the day before Thanksgiving when he persuaded the child’s mother to drop her from a third-story window into his waiting arms, according to news reports.

“I didn’t want my daughter to lose her life,” Shuntara Thomas told KXAS. “He told me: ‘Just trust me. I got her, I got her.’ So without even thinking, I just dropped her.”

The 1-year-old girl was caught by Byron Campbell, who was one of the first people to arrive on the scene.

Campbell told Dallas News on Wednesday that he had seen smoke coming from the apartment building, so he drove to it. He went inside, knocked on apartment doors and told people to get out.

When he emerged from the building, he joined people who were using a mattress to help residents jump from the windows. That’s when he heard Thomas yell that she had a baby. “So I told her to drop the baby out,” Campbell said. “The baby was crying.”

After catching the baby, he said, he handed off the girl to a woman on the scene and went back to assisting others who were jumping out of the windows. Firefighters said six people escaped the burning building by going out the windows. No one was injured.

The fire destroyed 24 apartments that housed about 40 people, and the building has been demolished, KXAS reported.

“Throwing my baby out to a complete stranger that I didn’t know ... but I do thank him because without him my child’s life would not have been saved,” Thomas told KDFW. “As long as I got my family, I’m good. So I may not have anything else, but it teaches me not to be thankful for the material things but to be thankful for everything that I do have.”