Edwin Toorenbeek didn’t think for a moment when he first shouted ‘burn!’ heard shouting and a moment later ‘my child!’ was called by his neighbor. Edwin entered the house to rescue his neighbor’s two-year-old child from the room. “I jumped in, I took that cub out and gave it to her. I still had to look carefully, because there was a lot of smoke.”
The fire started around half past twelve on a balcony of an apartment on Admiraliteitslaan in Den Bosch. According to Edwin and other neighbors, fireworks were thrown from upstairs to downstairs, but also from downstairs to upstairs. “I hope that person comes forward, who would do something like that? What sense do you have? I have no words for it.” The child’s mother was standing at the front of the apartment to wish the neighbors a Happy New Year, when the fire started on the other side.
Another apartment resident believes that fireworks were the cause of the fire, but that there was no intent. He thinks the fireworks blew onto the balcony. “There were a lot of fireworks going off here. I also saw some fireworks blowing onto my balcony.”
He thinks it is the most normal thing in the world that Edwin took the child out of the house and possibly saved a human life. “Everyone says that to me. But it’s a child, isn’t that completely normal?”
The child has been taken to hospital. The child’s mother was also reportedly injured. She was also taken to hospital. It is not known how they are doing now. “An extremely sad situation. My thoughts are with the child and its family,” Mayor Jack Mikkers of Den Bosch responded on Monday afternoon.