A fireman described yesterday how he saved the life of a suicidal woman by grabbing her wrist with one hand as they dangled 13 metres in the air at the end of a safety rope.
Au Kin-yip, 30, who is attached to Sai Wan Ho fire station, and the 29-year-old woman were left hanging in mid-air outside a fourth-floor flat in Shau Kei Wan on Sunday morning.
The fireman had climbed down from a fifth-floor flat to the air-conditioning unit on the flat below where the woman was preparing to jump. As he grabbed her arm, she struggled and they both fell.
'We both fell off the platform and were hanging in the air outside the fourth-floor unit. My hand slid to her wrist and she then stopped struggling,' he said.
The pair dangled in the air for about 10 seconds before his colleagues lowered them to the third floor, where Mr Au swung her on to the air-conditioning platform. A colleague then grabbed the woman and pulled her into the building.
'The woman was not heavy, weighing around 100 pounds [40kg]. Luckily she did not continue to struggle, otherwise I might not have been able to hold her tight,' he said.