Whether you believe in miracles or not, there’s one thing we can all agree on: This is one incredibly fortunate boy.
News agencies around the globe are reporting the sigh-of-relief news that an unnamed 10-year-old Chinese boy somehow managed to survive a harrowing 20-story fall from his apartment window in Guiyang, China.
What broke his fall? The roof of a parked car.
According to Chinese site Xinhuanet.com, the impact shattered the car’s back windshield and broke the roof, but the boy’s head was cushioned by a pillow on the backseat. Wow, that was one perfectly placed pillow!
“It’s great news the boy survived,” said the owner of the car, who just uttered the understatement of the year. “The car can be fixed easily.”
Hopefully the boy can be fixed easily as well. Although he did not suffer fractures to his skull, Dr. Li Jianyang, who examined the boy, said he has some bleeding on the brain, although his condition is stable. He’s currently still under observation in the neurosurgery department of the People’s Hospital in the Guizhou province.
As amazing as this story sounds, it’s not the first time someone has survived a fall from that height — and higher. Last month, New Yorker Thomas Magill, 22, survived a feet first fall from a staggering 39 stories up (it was reportedly a suicide attempt). The thing that saved him? Again, a parked car.
“He came down feet-first at like 100 miles per hour,” Andrew Petrocelli, who witnessed the fall, told the New York Daily News. “That’s a miracle if I’ve ever seen one.”
Luck, miracle, whatever. We’re just relieved they both lived to tell the tale — and will hopefully steer clear of open windows in tall buildings.
Photo by hudzik via stock.xchang.