What happened in Zhangye, in northwestern China, is the exact definition of a nightmare come true.
A boy barely three years old, driven by the primal instinct to flee what he feared most—a medical injection—managed the unthinkable: to get out through a window and end up trapped on a narrow third-floor ledge, more than 10 meters above the ground.
The little boy, dressed only in his diaper and a T-shirt, was left suspended in the air, desperately clinging to a metal cable while his feet barely brushed the edge of the wall.
Below, witnesses screamed in horror, knowing that a single second of fatigue in his arms would mean a fatal fall.
A police officer and a local shopkeeper, identified as Wang Duohong, came out from the window above. With millimetric precision and nerves of steel, they managed to stretch far enough to reach the boy’s fragile arms.
Despite the height and the time he spent hanging, the boy was completely unharmed.