A child miraculously survived after a 10-storey-high jump off a residential building — using an umbrella as a parachute, Chinese media reported.
The boy, 7, jumped holding an umbrella after seeing a cartoon character parachute from a window doing the same thing, the reports added.
The South China Morning Post reported that while the boy's family lived on a fifth-floor apartment in Suzhou, Jiangsu province, the height is about the same as 10 storeys as the residences are penthouse duplexes.
Incidentally, it was not the umbrella that saved him; rather, it was a power line on which he landed that arrested what would have been a deadly fall, witnesses said told the paper.
The mother, upon seeing her child's frail body and limbs splayed on the ground, reportedly collapsed... as seen on this alleged video of the incident.
The boy, who was not named, sustained serious injuries, a doctor was quoted as saying, but were not life-threatening, following an emergency surgery, his doctor added.
Relatives apparently told the doctor that the boy was watching a cartoon where a character used an umbrella as a parachute to jump from an elevated structure.
The power line caught the boy at about two-storeys high, before he fell to the ground.
The news website Sohu.com also reported similar cases where children have hurt themselves while trying to imitating cartoon characters.
Children mimicking dangerous stunts from films or TV shows have resulted in serious injuries and widely covered by mainland media, the report said.
The string of events prompted a heated debate over whether the government should adopt an age-rating system for TV shows similar to those enforced in Western countries.
In March, a five-year-old girl was rushed to the ICU after she used an umbrella to jump off the 11th floor of a building in Urumqi in Xinjiang, and landed on a platform on the fourth floor.
In December, a girl who tried to climb down the water pipes outside her apartment fell five storeys down and was badly hurt.
The report said the girl went looking for her mother but their unit's front door was locked. The report also claimed that the girl the idea of climbing down the pipes from cartoons she had watched.
In another case in March last year, a five-year-old girl suffered serious cuts in the nose and face after her 10-year-old sister used a saw on her after seeing it in a cartoon TV show, the reported added.
The SCMP also reported in March last year that a Hong Kong seven-year-old boy had cheated death in fall from a building by landing on canvas canopy and then car roof.
