The Washington PostDemocracy Dies in Darkness

A woman took her dog out — and saved a toddler from plunging to his death

May 11, 2023 at 5:55 a.m. EDT
A screen grab of a KCCI news report showing Kyrie Jones outside the townhouse where she caught a toddler who fell out of a neighbor's window
Kyrie Jones, who's 33 weeks pregnant, talks about how she caught a 2-year-old boy when he fell out of the second-story window of his family's townhouse in Des Moines on Monday. (Courtesy KCCI)
3 min

Kyrie Jones thought her next-door neighbor had simply been careless while taking out the trash on Monday when she noticed a window screen and a PlayStation controller lying on the ground.

Then she heard a thud.

Her head swiveled to the second story of the townhouse next to hers in Des Moines, where she spotted the source: a 2-year-old boy who had been throwing things out an open window. He started leaning out over the ledge.

“No, no, no!” Jones, 35, yelled at the toddler. “Go get Mommy!”

Jones, who’s nearly 33 weeks pregnant, had come out back into the shared driveway behind the townhouses, thinking she would quickly let Prince, her Pomeranian puppy, do his business before ducking back inside. Instead, she found herself at the start of a life-or-death crisis.

Unmoved by Jones’s orders, the boy stayed at the window. Afraid that he would lean out farther if she kept talking, Jones darted through her house, whizzed out the front door and started banging on her neighbor’s door while mashing the doorbell.

There was no answer.

Jones called the police department. She told them what was happening, gave her information and zipped back to the rear of the building. When she returned, things had taken a dire turn. The boy was no longer in the apartment but gripping the window ledge while he dangled above the concrete below.

He started crying. Jones started screaming.

“I was like, ‘Somebody help!”

No one came to their rescue. Less than a minute later, the boy tried to pull himself up into the apartment. But he lost his grip and fell.

Jones was there. She caught him in what she described as “an almost squat position.” The 2-year-old’s feet barely touched the concrete, she said.

“He was okay,” she added, choking up.

Aside from a few bruises on her thighs and a massive adrenaline rush, so was Jones.

Police officers arrived about two minutes after she caught him. Since the boy’s diaper had fallen off, Jones retrieved her housecoat and wrapped him in it. Then she and officers brought him to the front of the townhouse, where the mother emerged and retrieved her son.

Sgt. Paul Parizek, a spokesperson for the Des Moines Police Department, said in an email to The Washington Post that the boy’s mother had left him unsupervised for a “short period” while she was elsewhere in the townhouse. Police have not charged the mother with any crime, though they referred the case to the Iowa Department of Health and Human Services, Parizek said.

Jones said she doesn’t like to think of what would have happened if she hadn’t been there.

“That’s a pretty high drop, especially onto concrete,” she said, adding: “I would have walked out to either a crime scene or a baby screaming.”