An MTA city bus driver says he was thinking of his own young daughter when he rushed to catch a 7-year-old girl plunging three stories from a Brooklyn building Monday.

"Please let me catch her, please let me catch her," Stephen St. Bernard, 52, recalled thinking. "That's all I could say. Let me catch the little baby."

"I think about my daughter, and you know, she's a little kid," he said.  

St. Bernard, an MTA bus driver of 10 years, was returning home to Coney Island from his job at about 2 p.m. when he heard screams coming from a building courtyard.

He rushed toward the commotion and saw a girl standing on top of a third-floor window air conditioning unit. He immediately ran underneath the window.

"She just stood up there teetering, teetering," he said.

Amateur video shows St. Bernard shouting up to the girl, trying to talk the girl into going back into her apartment. Suddenly, the girl falls, eliciting horrified screams from neighbors.

But St. Bernard catches her in his arms, stumbling slightly forward to the ground with the girl still firmly in his grasp.

"I picked her up and carried her, and I was holding her, rubbing her, and she just more or less kept looking around," he told NBC 4 New York. "She never closed her eyes, she didn't lose consciousness."

The girl was not wearing pants, and St. Bernard wrapped her in his MTA uniform shirt as he waited for paramedics to arrive.

She was taken to Coney Island Hospital with very minor injuries.

"He's my hero," said the girl's aunt, Monique Harding. "He definitely did our family a favor today."

Police sources said the girl has autism. Her mother was inside the apartment watching her other child and did not see the girl standing outside on the A/C, the sources said.

St. Bernard sustained a torn tendon in his shoulder but he is expected to be OK.

His daughter, who is also 7, called her father a hero.

"The child was like almost like my age, so like he always carries me, so I guess he'd probably be able to catch her," said Tahaani St. Bernard.

The girl's mother did not want to speak with reporters Monday.

http://www.nbcnewyork.com/news/local/Her...66676.html

The building owner put locks on the windows so they can only open so far.  This is to prevent children from falling out the window.   Kids can fall when not watched only for a moment such as a caregiver using the toilet, answering the door or going into another room for a bit.  I don't really think there is an epidemic of child with autism falling out of windows.  

Only that man saved the child's life.  What providence!

Thats why the OP title wasnt Autistic child falls 3 stories

It was all about the man who broke her fall  

The video of her fall was amazing.

She was just up there stimming away without a care in the world, before she lost her balance

This post was last modified: 07-17-2012 03:24 PM by skyblue1 .

Things like this give me back my faith in humanity.

Wow, that puts tears in my eyes!

Wow! Talk about a guardian angel.
I say he was an angel not just a hero....

He may have just earned his way into 'Heaven'


    ~ Do Good Deeds ~

Yay   

I saw a brief interview with the guy on CNN, and he's just so humble about it, like it was no big thing.  Amazing!

He said she was up there smiling and having a good time, oblivious to the danger she was in

The hero tore a tendon in his shoulder

I really liked that the national news didnt make a big deal out of her being Autist

Just mentioned it in passing

Definitely a step in the right direction.

I really liked the fact that his name is "St Bernard"!  Makes me think of those big dogs who save people in avalanches on mountains.  
Alison

This post was last modified: 07-18-2012 02:34 AM by Alison.

Yeah, the national news DID handle it very well, and they didn't add something like 'tragically' before they said she had autism.

He was so happy to have caught her, what a wonderful human being!

I've just caught the story on the news programme here in Oz.  They didn't even mention that the little girl had autism, just said that the guy had saved a child when she fell.  He looks like such a nice guy, btw.  It does restore my faith in humanity somewhat.
Alison