An upstate New York man on his way to a cruise vacation risked his life to save a mother of two during Friday’s deadly shooting rampage at the Fort Lauderdale, Fla., airport.
Tony Barosiewicz, a 70-year-old retired electrician from Rochester, acted as a human shield during the attack, throwing himself on top of Annika Dean, a stranger, as bullets flew and the gunman walked toward her in a baggage-claim area of the Fort Lauderdale-Hollywood International Airport.
Dean had been lying facedown behind a luggage cart.
“I was praying,” the Broward County, Fla., art teacher recalled. “I was thinking of my children, and of the three possible outcomes. And then a man climbed on top of me, and said, ‘I will protect you.’
“At that point, I knew I would be OK,” she said, her voice strained. “I knew he might not be OK. I knew he might get shot trying to save another human being, trying to save a life.”
Neither Bartosiewicz nor Dean were shot, though one bullet whizzed over their heads.
Dean said Bartosiewicz remained humble afterward.
“He doesn’t think that what he did was that big of a deal,” said Dean, who was traveling alone. “I don’t think he wants recognition. But I believe he committed an act of selfless heroism.”
Bartosiewicz’s daughter, Jennifer Miller, said that he was at the airport with his wife, Jennifer Cleeton, her stepmom, but that they had been in separate areas. Cleeton was unharmed, she said.
Miller said her dad needed convincing to carry on with his and his wife’s vacation plans.
“He didn’t even want to go on the cruise after that. He sounded so shaken up on the phone,” said Miller, who lives in Denver.
But Miller persuaded them to go on the weeklong cruise, where they remained Sunday.