Correction: Updated at 5:13 p.m. Saturday to reflect that Shuntara Thomas is married.

For Shuntara Thomas, the day before Thanksgiving went from tragic to priceless — almost in an instant.

Thomas and her family awoke around 7 a.m. Wednesday to someone banging on their door. The Far East Dallas apartment complex where Thomas lived was on fire, and flames were spreading rapidly.

Thomas, 27, who had lived in the troubled apartment complex for only three months, scooped up her 1-year-old daughter, Kirsten McGregor, and tried to escape.

"Everything happened so fast," Thomas said Thursday from a relative's home where she was celebrating Thanksgiving. "It was kind of crazy, kind of tragic, but also kind of priceless at the end."

Kirsten McGregor, 1, was saved from an apartment fire when her mother, Shuntara Thomas, dropped her from a third-floor window into the waiting arms of bystander Byron Campbell. (Shuntara Thomas)

After they heard the banging Wednesday, Thomas' husband, Patrick Thomas, opened the front door to flames and smoke pouring in. "So he went into the bedroom and broke out the window," she said.

Then she faced a stark choice: how to get Kirsten out safely.

While other residents had thrown mattresses out of windows and jumped on them, Shuntara Thomas didn't want to depend on that.

So she called out, and someone answered.

"He told me to let her go," Thomas said. "And I let her go."

Kirsten landed in the arms of 21-year-old Byron Campbell, who stood below Thomas' third-floor window and urged the young mother to trust him.

"The young mother was holding her baby and yelling, 'Can somebody catch my baby?'" Campbell said Wednesday. "I just said, 'Trust me, I'll catch her!'"

Kirsten escaped with a scratch on her forehead but was fine otherwise, her mother said. Shuntara Thomas wasn't hurt, but Patrick Thomas was, requiring 22 stitches for cuts.

Byron Campbell was interviewed after he caught a baby dropped from the third floor during an apartment fire at the intersection of Interstate 635 and Ferguson Road in Dallas on Nov. 21, 2018. (Nathan Hunsinger / Staff Photographer)

"With having to jump, of course I was scared," Shuntara Thomas said. "But what else was I going to do? The fire had made it to our living room, and I had to say a prayer."

Thomas said she never really felt in fear for her own life, but she is thankful that so many others were there for her.

"Everybody is a hero in my mind," she said. "The person who banged on our door is a hero. [Patrick Thomas] is a hero. All those people who came, they are all heroes."

About 40 residents were displaced and 24 units destroyed in the blaze at the Meadows at Ferguson apartments, at 11760 Ferguson Road near Interstate 635. Damage was so severe that the Fort Worth-based property owners, Eyal Dallas Holdings LLC, ultimately decided to demolish the building.

Last year, Dallas city attorneys sued the property owners over public safety issues. The case is set for court next spring. Property manager Harry Newman declined to address issues raised in the lawsuit, but told The Dallas Morning News on Wednesday that the company was working to find alternate housing for the displaced residents.

Shuntara Thomas returned to the site after 10 a.m. Wednesday to find only ruins.

Firefighters put out hot spots during an apartment fire at the intersection of Interstate 635 and Ferguson Road in Dallas on Wednesday, Nov. 21, 2018 (Nathan Hunsinger / Staff Photographer)

"We live on the third floor, and there was no third floor," she said.

Whatever possessions she had in her home are gone, but Thomas says she's not too concerned about those.

"Everything we lost was just materialistic," she said. "I still have everything that really matters to me. We're just trying to cope, so it's important to be with family."

She wants to thank Campbell but hasn't yet reached him, she said.

"I wanted to thank him personally, because if I hadn't made it out, I know my daughter would have," she said.