Military Veteran Scales Building to Save Boy Dangling from Fifth Floor Window Grate

A former People’s Liberation Army (PLA) soldier is being praised online for his selfless act of saving a boy who was dangling from the fifth-floor window grate of an apartment complex in China.

The heroic save happened on Wednesday while military veteran Zhang Xin was walking around in Zhijiang County, in southern China’s Hunan Province, when he heard a child’s cries that he believed was coming from a nearby building, according to Shanghaiist.

After seeing the boy from the streets, he immediately went inside the building and knocked on doors hoping for one resident to answer. He tried knocking on multiple doors on the fourth, fifth, and sixth floors, but to no avail.

Zhang then found an apartment door on the second floor that was unlocked. From there, he immediately climbed out of the security grates and scaled the building up to the fifth-floor window to save the boy without any safety equipment on, Global Times reported.

With using just his bare hands and the window grilles to climbed on, Zhang managed to reach the boy and push him back into the window.

The police were notified of the incident, but by the time they arrived on the scene, the boy was already safely inside his apartment.

It turns out that the boy was left alone inside his home by his grandmother. Before leaving, the officers reportedly lectured the grandmother about not leaving children alone inside the apartment.