Society

Toddler caught by woman after 10th floor fall

By Yang Yijun (China Daily)
Updated: 2011-07-04 07:50

SHANGHAI - A young mother in Hangzhou of Zhejiang province saved the life of a 2-year-old girl who fell from the 10th floor of a building on Saturday.

Rescuer Wu Juping smiles at her own son in a ward of the Traditional Chinese Medicine Bone Fracture Hospital at Fuyang, a county-level city in Hangzhou, East China's Zhejiang province, on Sunday, after she has saved a 2-year-old girl. [Photo/Xinhua]

On Saturday afternoon, while her grandmother went to get some quilts she was drying on the roof, the girl crawled on to the windowsill of the bedroom where her grandmother had left her sleeping. A downstairs neighbor seeing the girl tried to reach her using a ladder, but the attempt failed and the girl finally fell.

Wu Juping, 31, who lives in the same neighborhood, ran to the building when she heard someone cry out in alarm and managed to catch the girl before she hit the ground. However, Wu was not able to hold her because of the force of the impact.

"The girl's brain, lungs, gastrointestinal tract are all injured because of the height she fell from. She also has difficulties in urination," a doctor with Zhejiang Children's Hospital posted on its micro blog on Sunday.

Wu suffered a comminuted fracture in her left arm and will have to undergo surgery. Her recovery is expected to take six months.

"If it were not for Wu, my daughter would have no chance of receiving treatment," the girl's father, surnamed Zhang, was quoted by China Central Television as saying on Sunday.

"It is the greatest warmth I have ever experienced in my life - that a stranger saved my daughter's life," Zhang said.

Wu works at the customer service department of China's e-commerce giant Alibaba, and Alibaba's chairman Ma Yun said via his micro blog on Sunday that, "I feel privileged to have been working with Wu for seven years. I hope Wu and the girl can get well soon."

"I did it out of a mother's instinct," Wu told Hangzhou-based Youth Times.

"I know how difficult it is to deliver and bring up a child. I wouldn't accept it if the child died in front of me," said Wu, whose own baby is only seven months old.