by MICHAEL WHITE
A rookie firefighter only four months out of the Fire Academy helped drag an unconscious elderly woman from a smoke-filled and pitch-black Brooklyn apartment yesterday, officials said. The daring rescue occurred about 7 a.m. as 24-year-old Brian Pascascio responded to a call while covering a colleague's shift at Coney Island's Ladder 166. After learning a woman might be trapped in the Gravesend apartment, Pascascio and his team, led by Lt. Robert Hayes, broke into the flat without the protection of a hose line. "I searched to the left of me and I found the bedroom, and the victim was lying on the floor," said Pascascio, a Bedford-Stuyvesant native. "I felt her chest and she had real shallow breath, but I knew she was breathing." Pascascio grabbed 85-year-old Sylvia Bonios by her shoulders and fellow Firefighter Joe Walz took her feet. The duo dragged her toward the door, crouching under heavy black smoke. "Hayes had made it to the door, and Joe Walz basically just followed the officer's voice," said Pascascio, who was a city paramedic for three years before joining the FDNY in September. The trio carried Bonios out of the high-rise at Shore Parkway and Bay 43rd St. She was taken to Jacobi Medical Center, where she was in critical condition in the burn unit last night, officials said. Pascascio said he received plenty of "attaboys" from his veteran brethren. "I'm usually an engine guy, and this time I was looking for victims," he said. "And I found one my first time."
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