In Poland, Three Men Use a Stretched Blanket to Save a Four-Year-Old Girl Who Fell from the Fifth Floor

In a Polish town, three passers-by saved the life of a four-year-old girl who fell from a fifth-floor balcony. The men managed to stretch out a blanket in time to cushion the child's fall after she had climbed onto the balcony of a neighbouring, empty apartment and tumbled off.

According to Grzegorz, the owner of a local shop who witnessed the incident, it all began around two o'clock in the afternoon. "I stepped out of the shop into the storeroom and heard people shouting. I ran around the corner, looked up and saw a child on the railing," he told the newspaper Fakt. He immediately ran under the balcony, ready to catch the girl with his bare hands if she fell. Soon two other passers-by joined him, one of whom happened to be carrying a blanket.

"I was shouting at her to climb back, but she wasn't reacting at all. She even managed to climb over to the other side of the balcony. We moved with the blanket to follow her — and that's when she fell," the rescuer continued. The girl bounced off the blanket and hit the ground, but the cushioned fall spared her from serious injury. "She only had a dislocated arm and not a single scratch otherwise. She probably just got a bit bruised," the man noted. Firefighters and paramedics soon arrived at the scene and took the child to hospital.

The mother was drunk at the time of the incident

The girl's mother appeared only several minutes later — she had been asleep at the moment of the fall. It later emerged that her blood alcohol level was 0.7 per mille. "I couldn't wake her up, I kept banging on the door for a long time. When she finally opened it, she was groggy and came downstairs slowly, while I kept urging her, telling her the child needed help right away," one neighbour recalled. "She was completely out of it," the woman added.

It is still unclear how long the four-year-old had been alone on the balcony. She had managed to climb over the partition separating two balconies and end up on the balcony of the neighbouring, vacant apartment — and it was from there that she fell.

Neighbours say the family has lived in the building for a year or two. The girl was usually seen only with her father, who is currently working abroad in the Netherlands. The mother and child are now in hospital in the city of Białystok. "These parents should walk to Częstochowa on their knees to give thanks that the child is even alive. It's a miracle," said one neighbour, referring to the famous Polish pilgrimage site.

Around Prague, based on reporting by novinky.cz