Syracuse, N.Y. — Luis Colon Torres was working at his downtown Syracuse restaurant early Sunday when he got the call:

The home of his girlfriend’s father was on fire. The girlfriend’s sister, a toddler, lives there, too.

Colon Torres hurried to the North Side home, which was engulfed in fire. Neighbors were shouting that a child could be trapped inside. Firefighters were ready to go in.

But Colon Torres knew the layout of the home. He rushed in, guided through the smoke and darkness by the firefighters’ flashlights.

He found her.

The 19-month-old girl was lying on a bed inside a dark, smoke-filled room. Colon Torres swooped her into one arm and ran back through the house, past firefighters and toward the front porch.

He jumped down the porch steps and hustled the girl to medical crews.

“I just reacted,” Colon Torres told syracuse.com Sunday.

The child is his girlfriend’s younger sister. The toddler is friends with Colon Torres’ 18-month-old daughter, he said.

The fire left the child and her father seriously injured. Colon Torres refers to them as his sister-in-law and father-in-law. Colon Torres declined to identify them.

His girlfriend’s father had lived there for more than a decade, and Colon Torres used the upstairs apartment as housing for some of his employees.

He tried to tell firefighters where he believed the bedrooms were as crews prepared to enter.

When firefighters opened a side door, Colon Torres initially went inside with them. The smoke and heat overpowered them.

“The scene was so terrifying,” he said.

He backed out. The firefighters would find his family, he told himself. He watched them work and tried to direct them from outside.

Finally, he couldn’t wait.

“My impulse took over, and I just ran in,” he said.

Inside, it was hot, dark and filled with smoke.

He headed toward the room where he believed the child would be. She was on the bed. Colon Torres said he grabbed her with one arm. He yelled that he had found her. He bolted out.

The child was not breathing, Colon Torres said. He tried to help her, then firefighters and medical crews took over and began CPR.

Colon Torres said she was so still, he feared she had died.

Flying out of the door, he carried the child past her mother, he said. As emergency crews worked on the girl, Colon Torres stayed with the mother.

He thought to himself as he comforted the girl’s mother: How do you tell the mother, “Your baby’s dead?”

“I was just hugging the mom, just calming her down, calming everybody down,” he said. “But in fact, I actually thought I was just calming myself.”

Firefighters continued searching and found an unresponsive adult in the same area, Caster said.

The child and her father remained hospitalized Sunday, but their conditions had taken very different turns, Colon Torres said.

The 19-month-old was intubated but breathing on her own and beginning to respond, he said. Doctors had not seen signs of neurological damage, though the family was still waiting for more tests, he said.

Colon Torres called her progress “a miracle.”

“I think that the little time, the four-minute difference of taking the baby out, of staying in there, made a lot of difference,” Colon Torres said.

Her father was in much more serious condition.

On Sunday, Colon Torres had just left his hospital room when he spoke with Syracuse.com.

“My father-in-law is not doing well,” he said. “He’s not doing well at all.”

Colon Torres was also evaluated after breathing in smoke but said he was OK.

The two people living in the second-floor apartment were alerted by working smoke detectors and escaped safely, a fire official said. A third person who lived in the first-floor apartment was not home.

Fire investigators found the fire started on the first-floor rear porch. The cause is being investigated.

Hours later, Colon Torres was at the hospital with his family, still trying to process what happened.

Videos from the scene helped fill in moments he barely remembers. In one, he said, he watched himself jumping from the porch with the baby in his arms. Firefighters he barely remembered seeing were around him.

People at the hospital kept thanking him for saving the girl. Colon Torres said the attention had become overwhelming.

He is a father of five. Hours before the fire, he had been celebrating his oldest daughter’s 20th birthday at his restaurant.

He bought Guadalajara in 2022 and opened Isla Caribbean Cuisine — Caribbean style with a special emphasis on Puerto Rican cuisine — in March 2026. Colon Torres is also active in both the local Latino community and in civic roles in the community. He is a member of the board of directors of the Onondaga County Resource Recovery Agency.

For him, running into the house wasn’t a decision that required much consideration.

“I will do it again,” Colon Torres said.

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