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‘A real superhero’: man praised for catching two-year-old toddler after five-floor fall out of window

  • The girl fell four floors onto a terrace and then fell again when she moved
  • A nearby Good Samaritan caught her before she landed on the concrete pavement

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A man was caught on video catching a girl who had fallen out of her fifth-floor window. Photo: Weibo
Mandy Zuo

A man from eastern China has been honoured as a national hero after he caught a falling toddler who had tumbled out of the window of her fifth-floor flat, landed on a first-floor terrace, and then slid over that edge and plummeted towards the pavement.

Shen Dong, 31, was parking his car across the street on Tuesday when he heard a loud bang caused by the two-year-old girl landing on the steel roofing on the first-floor terrace of a housing complex after falling four stories out the window.
The little girl then fell over the edge of the terrace when she started to move and fell towards the pavement, but Shen caught the little girl before she landed on the concrete, according to a viral video released by local police on Wednesday.

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Heroic man catches falling toddler in China

Heroic man catches falling toddler in China

The girl from Tongxiang in Zhejiang province injured her legs and lungs, but she is in stable condition.

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Shen, who works at a nearby bank, called emergency personnel while he was rushing with a female colleague to help the girl, but tossed his mobile phone immediately and reached the toddler just in time to prevent her from hitting the ground.

He said he did not realise it was a child until she started moving a few seconds after landing on the terrace. The movement made her fall again, which is when Shen ran over to catch her.

A video shows the toddler falling out of window before she landed on the terrace. Photo: Weibo
A video shows the toddler falling out of window before she landed on the terrace. Photo: Weibo

“To be honest, I cannot remember the details. I cannot remember if my arms hurt or anything. It was just instinct to reach out to her,” Shen told local newspaper Qianjiang Evening News.

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