Frantic mom pulls baby from under car after it crashes into them

By Rande Iaboni and Mary Snow

 -- A car careens onto a sidewalk, bowls over a 17-year-old woman and crushes the stroller holding her 8-month-old daughter. The mother immediately jumps up and frantically begins trying to pull the baby out from under the car.

Within seconds she has her. Both are taken to a hospital, but neither is badly hurt.

"God helped us," mother Alondra Gervacio told CNN on Wednesday as she held her daughter.

The incident was caught on a surveillance camera overlooking a Bronx sidewalk just before 1 p.m. Tuesday.

Mom saves baby under cab Police say a 68-year-old driver lost consciousness behind the wheel of a livery cab, or a car for hire. The Lincoln Town Car struck one vehicle stopped at a red light and another vacant parked car, and then sped down the sidewalk directly at Gervacio and her infant.

The surveillance video shows Gervacio, start to go to her left, then pull the stroller back to the right, barely managing to get it out of the way of the front of the car.

But both are struck by the side of the car. The woman is sent sprawling but the stroller is pulled underneath the vehicle, just in front of the rear tire. The impact happened just as the car hit a storefront and came to a skidding halt.

The video then shows the woman rush to the car, fall to her knees and begin tugging at the crumpled stroller. She pulls the child out and quickly carries her away.

"I didn't stop for my pain or nothing," Gervacio said. "I just wanted to look for her and she was under the taxi."

The baby was not wedged under the car, but was lying sideways.

Both the mother and child were taken to Lincoln Medical Center, according to the police report.

The unconscious driver of the livery cab was taken to a hospital and pronounced dead. Police said he had suffered a heart attack, CNN affiliate WABC reported.

The stopped vehicle that the Town Car first struck had two passengers inside, but neither requested medical attention, according to police.

George Martinez, the livery owner, told WABC-TV the car's driver was "a nice responsible driver ... always responsible."

Gervacio said she went to church after she got out of the hospital. Her daughter spent the night at the hospital for observation.

Her cousin, Vanessa Sanchez, recalled seeing the surveillance tape.

"She really got lucky," Sanchez said. "If she wouldn't have pulled back in time that could have been their lives."