BEIJING, China (RTV) -- A policeman rescued a four-year-old boy who was perilously hanging off the ledge of a seventh-floor residential house's balcony in southwest China's Chongqing Municipality on Tuesday.
The accident happened near a clinic in the city's Fuling District Tuesday afternoon. Footage of a videos shot by a witnesses showed the boy clinging to the railings of the balcony with his body swinging 20 meters above the ground.
"I saw a flowerpot fall off while a boy was just dangling over there," said a witness.
Some people brought some blankets from a nearby clinic and held them suspended to catch the boy if he fell by accident.
"We got several blankets from a clinic and some 20 to 30 of us held the blankets to let them suspended. We planned to catch the boy if he fell down from the building," said another witness.
Yang Guoping, an auxiliary policeman of a nearby police station, happened to walk by the site. When he got to know the situation, he immediately went up into the building to rescue the boy.
"They couldn't possibly catch the boy just with those blankets," said Yang. "So I ran upstairs from the entrance of the hospital and asked a doctor which way to take. I told him I needed to save a boy. But we took the wrong side and I had to climb over a balcony. I grabbed the kid's feet and pulled him up with my arms."
It took Yang about 15 minutes to bring the boy to safety, according to witnesses closely watching from the ground.
Local residents said the boy retreated the balcony of his apartment house when a carton in the room caught fire, probably due to a electric short circuit. Firefighters later put out the fire when they arrived on the scene.
