Ten months after a medical jet slammed into a Northeast Philadelphia street and turned a routine Friday drive into a wall of fire, 10-year-old Ramesses Vazquez Viana is preparing to come home.
The boy everyone calls “Ramses” was nine when the Jet Rescue Air Ambulance Learjet crashed on Cottman Avenue near Roosevelt Boulevard on January 31, 2025. It had just taken off from Northeast Philadelphia Airport, carrying a pediatric patient and her mother home to Mexico. The aircraft climbed briefly before plummeting nearly straight down and exploding on impact.
A tweet from X.
Six people on the plane died instantly. The fireball swept across the intersection, killing two more people on the ground and injuring at least 23 others. Four homes were destroyed and dozens more damaged.
Ramesses was riding in the back seat of his father Steven Dreuitt’s car with his father’s girlfriend, Dominique Goods-Burke. Both adults died Steven that night, Dominique in April after months of fighting 70 percent burns.
Somehow the little boy got out.
Caseem Wongus, 23, was eating at the Raising Cane’s when he worked at when he saw a child stumbling from a burning car, clothes on fire. Wongus ran into the heat, threw his jacket over Ramesses, and carried him to waiting medics.
Even while his skin was literally melting, Ramesses gave rescuers his mother’s phone number.
“He recited it perfectly,”
Jamie Vazquez Viana later told CBS Philadelphia.
“That’s how they reached me.”
Doctors found third- and fourth-degree burns over 90 percent of his body. Miraculously, his lungs and internal organs were unharmed.
He was taken that night to Shriners Children’s Hospital in Boston, one of the leading pediatric burn centers in the country. He would spend weeks in a medically induced coma.
Since February, Ramesses has had 42 operations skin grafts, wound cleanings, and the partial amputation of fingers on both hands to save what tissue could be saved. He has relearned to walk, to climb stairs, to speak after months when pain kept him silent.
In October he turned 10 in the hospital. Staff decorated his room classmates sent videos reading his favorite books Pete the Cat and The Bad Seed.
This month he transferred to Weisman Children’s Rehabilitation Hospital in Marlton, New Jersey, just across the river from Philadelphia. On November 20 his mother told reporters he is “very close” to discharge.
“No matter how many times you knock him down, he’s strong,”
Jamie said.
“He still needs prayers, but he’s coming home.”
Mastery Charter Smedley Elementary, Ramesses’ school in Frankford, declared
“Yellow for Ramesses Fridays”
Because yellow is his favorite color. Students sell $5 bracelets that read “Rise Up with Ramesses.” Teachers organize dress-down days. Care packages arrive filled with drawings, origami cranes, and soft pretzels.
A GoFundMe started with a $5,000 goal has now passed $25,000. Philadelphia Eagles players have sent video messages. Caseem Wongus, the man who pulled him from the fire, stays in touch.
“That kid is a warrior,”
Wongus said.
The family’s only official fundraiser is titled
“Support Ramesses’ Surgery and Healing Journey”
On GoFundMe. Any other links should be treated with caution.
Ramesses still faces years of outpatient surgeries, pressure garments, and therapy as he grows. But the boy who once could not move is now cracking jokes in therapy and asking when he can play outside again.
His mother’s plea is simple:
“Philadelphia came together for him once. We’re asking you to keep going.”
As Christmas approaches Jamie’s favorite holiday the city is ready to welcome its smallest warrior home in yellow.
