Turkish man catches child after fall from seventh floor

ESKİŞEHİR

The cleaning worker who saved the girl's life said he received many phone calls from people who declared him a hero.

A Turkish man has caught a four-year-old girl who fell from a seventh floor window in a central Anatolian city.

Şükrü Deniz, a cleaning worker in the Eskişehir province, was passing by a building in the Cumhuriyet neighborhood on Nov. 28, when a pair of shoes fell on the street. "I looked up to complain about the people who throw shoes from their windows, but I saw a kid on the top floor playing on the window ledge," Deniz told Doğan News Agency.


Throwing away his broom, Deniz prepared himself to catch the kid whose fall was imminent at the moment. "I moved the same way with the kid. She finally lost her grip and I tried to catch her in the air," he added.

Passersby called the emergency services soon after the fall and the four-year-old Ecrin Esen was hospitalized with an ambulance in critical condition. Her father, Hüsnü Esen, told Doğan News Agency that Ecrin's health improved and she is expected to leave the intensive care unit on Nov 30.

The cleaning worker, on the other hand, declared a hero on Turkish social media. "She was crying after the fall, but she was conscious. Although I was physically OK, I was so shocked that I couldn't stand up for a few minutes," he said, adding that "a thank you message is enough" for him as a prize.