3 Children Saved From Fire : Heroism: Onlookers help a mother rescue the youngsters from a burning apartment; a baby is in critical condition.

A mother and three onlookers rescued three children from a burning apartment Tuesday after cutting and ripping one child’s clothing free from a sofa to which it apparently had fused in the heat.

Two-month-old Terrance Gray Jr.was in critical condition with second- and third-degree burns at UCI Medical Center. Two other toddlers and Terrance’s mother, LaDawne Bonner, 20, who was baby-sitting at the apartment, were uninjured.

The cause of the blaze was under investigation. Fire officials said a Christmas tree in the living room “definitely” acted as an accelerator if not the source of the blaze, which gutted the apartment and caused $13,000 damage.

Accounts of exactly who rescued whom differed. But Bonner told fire officials that she threw 2-year-old Junior Tali out the bedroom window but was unable in several attempts to rescue her son Terrance in the living room because of the heat and smoke. Bonner said she passed another child, Rishawn Jason, 3, out the window to onlookers.

A neighbor, Ben Seyed, said he also etered the bedroom searching for a child.

“I jumped in through the bedroom window and I handed the baby out,” said Seyed, 27, who had been changing the oil in his car when he spotted fire and smoke erupting from the windows of a ground-floor apartment at 3050 E. Madison Ave.

Seyed said he and two other neighbors, identified by hospital officials as Alanis Anselmo, 37, and Jeanna Craft, 20, helped in the rescue effort before firefighters arrived.

Seyed, who was treated with Craft and Anselmo at Placentia-Linda Hospital for smoke inhalation, said he ran to the apartment manager’s office to telephone police then returned to the burning unit where a crowd had gathered and a woman was crying because a child was still inside.

Seyed said no one was trying to enter the apartment.

“Then I heard the baby cry,” he said.

Seyed said he entered through the bedroom window and crawled in the dense smoke groping for the child, whom he found lying on a bed. After passing the youngster through the open window, “Somebody grabbed me and pulled me out,” he said.

Firefighters could not immediately sort out who had rescued each of the children. As Seyed sat on the ground outside the apartment, which was still filled with smoke, he said a crying woman told him there was another child still inside, on a sofa in the living room.

Seyed said he soaked a shirt and wrapped it around his face then re-entered the apartment, this time through a broken sliding glass door. Another onlooker shone a flashlight into the room from the outside.

“It was totally black,” Seyed said.

Nevertheless, Seyed said he found Terrance lying on a burning sofa.

“I thought he was dead,” Seyed said. “I couldn’t believe it. It was like a little doll.”

As Seyed tried to raise the child from the sofa, he noticed the baby was still was breathing.

The child’s clothing, charred from flames, had fused to the sofa, apparently because of the heat, Seyed said. Unable to pull the baby free of the sofa, Seyed removed its pants and diaper, then began to rip off its shirt. Skin on the child’s legs and chest peeled off with the garment, he said.

“I couldn’t stand the smoke too long,” he said.

At that point, Jeanne Craft entered the room with a small knife and cut the child’s shirt sleeve free from the sofa. Meanwhile, Anselmo had entered the room and was fighting the blaze with a fire extinguisher.

Seyed said it took 20 to 30 seconds to remove the child from the living room.