Kid Falls Out Window, Bounces Off Awning, & Caught by a Doctor
Miracle escape after toddler falls seven storeys from apartment block, bounces off café awning and is CAUGHT by passerby
An 18-month-old boy had a miraculous escape when he fell from a seventh-floor apartment and survived without so much as a scratch.
The toddler was playing by a window with an older sibling in the Paris block before he tumbled. Luckily his fallen was broken by a cafe awning which bounced him into the arms of a passerby who leapt forward to catch him.
The off-duty doctor quickly checked over the youngster and found no injuries although the baby was taken to hospital for tests.
His parents, who were not in the apartment at the time, were last night still in police custody.
The boy's fortunes were even more miraculous than it first appeared. According to reports, the cafe, in the north-eastern part of the city, had been closed for the All Saints bank holiday on Monday, an occasion that would usually see the awning closed.
However there was a jam in the mechanism which meant it had been left out from the day before.
A man living in a building opposite from the apartment told France Info he saw the toddler playing by the window with a girl a few years older.
The doctor who caught the boy, named by French press as Philippe Benseniot, was walking by with his wife and son when the boy spotted him falling.
He said: 'I was there at the right time. My son happened to look up and he saw that a little boy was on the balcony and had somehow got through the railing and was playing on the very edge of a vertical drop into the street.
'I just had the time to get across the street and place myself. I said to myself: "whatever happens, I mustn't miss him".
'He didn't have a scratch. He cried for a few moments and then calmed down and fell asleep.'
Neighbours on the seventh floor then prevented the little boy's sister from falling after him after speaking with her through the locked front door.
'I said, "Where is your brother?" and she said: "He's fallen",' said witness Samia Benmoussa. 'I panicked until I discovered what had happened. It was a real miracle."
