FDNY firefighters rescue teen impaled by wrought iron fence in Queens

Firefighters jumped into action to rescue a teen boy’s life after he was impaled by a wrought iron fence while horsing around with a buddy in Queens Tuesday afternoon.

The 15-year-old’s leg was pierced by one spike when the FDNY reached the scene around 3 p.m. and began cutting around the low fence to free the teen and rush him to the hospital, officials said in a press conference.

Firefighter Jason Shoemaker took a bandsaw to three of the vertical bars and the top horizontal bar on Himrod Street in Ridgewood while keeping a part of the fence inside the boy’s leg to prevent further injury on the sidewalk.

The remains of an iron fence at 2203 Himrod Street in Queens after firefighters cut the posts to rescue a teenager on Feb. 4, 2025. Peter Gerber

“We don’t want to cause any more harm to the victim so we leave him as stable as he can and then we cut around him,” Shoemaker explained, noting the rescue went “very smoothly.”

It took about ten minutes to pass the boy off to EMS. He was taken to Bellevue Hospital in Manhattan, where he is in stable condition.

“It’s not easy but that’s why we drill on that every day … we drill on that every day so this way when we do get there, we can make a difference and probably save someone’s life,” FDNY Lt. Mark Martinez for Rescue 4 said during the press conference.

The boy was surprisingly calm during the ordeal, which made the FDNY’s job easier, fire officials said.

A FDNY firefighter shows the tools used to extricate the teen from the fence. — An FDNY firefighter shows the tools used to extricate the teen from the fence. Peter Gerber

Leading up to the impalement, the boy and his buddy were messing around on the sidewalk.

“The reports I got, they were horsing around and one of his friends like pushed him and that friend landed on him. I don’t know if that’s the correct story, but that’s the reports we got,” Martinez said.