An 18-year-old Good Samaritan saved a little girl’s life in Bridgeport, Connecticut, this week when he heard her banging on the window of a hot Toyota van. 

The van was parked outside the Bass Pro Shop in Bridgeport at around 5 p.m. Wednesday. Alex Torres of Naugatuck, Connecticut, who was there to celebrate a friend’s birthday, was leaving the venue when he heard the banging and looked through the window. 

“The situation just changed and got so serious from, like, everybody partying and having fun into a really bad scenario where this kid could die. I saw the kid look at me in my eyes and I just broke the window,” Mr. Torres told local cable TV news channel News 12 Connecticut.

Seeing the distressed child sweating, he smashed the window open with his arm, letting the little girl go.

“I just one time, boom, it shattered, the kid is out of the car, and everybody is good. I’m blessed to be here, God brought me here, just to save that young lady,” Mr. Torres told WVIT-TV.

Mr. Torres would later go to the hospital, receiving 16 stitches.

Witnesses also called the police. A Bridgeport Police Department indicated that the temperature was still in the 90s by the time they arrived, according to the Connecticut Post.

The girl’s father, Rubeidi Montero-Matos, 35, of Bridgeport, told officers that “I forgot she was in the vehicle,” according to the Connecticut Post.

Mr. Montero-Matos was arrested, and faces charges of risking injury to a minor child, first degree reckless endangerment and falsifying his vehicle registration. 

The girl, meanwhile, was treated at a local hospital. Her mother, who was not named publicly, was arrested at the hospital for a failure to appear in court to face unspecified motor vehicle charges. 

After posting $2,500 bond and a Connecticut Department of Children and Families welfare check, she went home with her daughter, according to the Connecticut Post.

• Brad Matthews can be reached at bmatthews@washingtontimes.com.