"I was just praying that I would get there and that if she [fell] that I would catch her," Steven St. Bernard tells CBS 2 TV in New York City.
And in the Daily News, St. Bernard adds that, "I'm not a hero — anybody would have done it. I did it out of normal instincts."
Well, we bet many others will say St. Bernard, a city bus driver, is a real hero. Check the video of what happened Monday afternoon in Brooklyn.
According to CBS News, 7-year-old Keyla McCree, who is autistic, "apparently slipped out of [a third-story] window and climbed onto the family's newly installed air conditioner. Witnesses at the scene said she started dancing on top of the unit before falling."
Fortunately, St. Bernard came on the scene and made the critical catch. CBS says that "the girl was transported to Coney Island Hospital, but suffered no major injuries. St. Bernard suffered a torn tendon."
You might recall our post last October about a similar great catch in Boston: "Just Doing His Job, Says Firefighter Who Caught Boy Dropped Three Floors."
Update at 12:40 p.m., July 18: He Had To Push With 600 Pounds' Worth Of Force:
According to Huff Post Science, a physicist at the University of Virginia estimates St. Bernard needed to exert about 600 pounds' worth of force to slow the little girl's descent. That's doable for an instant or two, but would likely cause injury to the hero — as it did.
Meanwhile, Keyla's mom has had a chance to thank St. Bernard.
Copyright 2021 NPR. To see more, visit https://www.npr.org.
