A crying 3-year-old seen dangling from a telephone wire outside the third story of a Burbank apartment building escaped injury when a neighbor caught him as he plunged to the ground.
Konrad Lightner was moving furniture with his wife Sunday night when he noticed the toddler's head sticking out the window. The boy seemed to be trying to retrieve toys that were thrown out the window by another child in the apartment, Lightner said.
"He grabbed a telephone wire and started hanging from it," Lightner said. "After 40 seconds, he started crying because he understood he couldn’t go back to the window."
As the boy dangled from the wires, Lightner positioned a box spring underneath him.
"I knew I didn’t want to go against him. I tried to slow him down enough to break his fall," he said.
Lightner caught the toddler in his arms using the box spring for cushioning.
"It’s one of the most wonderful things I have ever seen," said Royce Nix, a paramedic who responded to the scene.
Lightner described the experience as "surreal."
"You don’t really carry a box spring with you everywhere, and it kind of worked out with us being there,” he said.
The boy's father, who was home but unaware of the situation, thanked Lightner for saving his son's life after a neighbor told him what happened.
Lightner said he is "just happy that everything turned out well” and the experience won't be forgotten.
