'I Saw Him Just Dangling': Teen's Lucky Catch Saves Boy from 3-Story Fall

Austin Konopacki's uneasiness and strong arms saved a Michigan toddler’s life Thursday.

He heard a noise, looked up and his fears were confirmed.

About 20 yards away, clinging precariously to a window ledge three stories up after a window screen gave way, was the toddler he and his coworkers had been joking with moments before as they worked on a sewer project at a Jackson apartment complex.

Konopacki sprang into action. “I saw him just dangling there," Konopacki told MLive/the Jackson Citizen Patriot. "There was a bush — but he wouldn't have fallen on the bush — there were these concrete blocks they use for landscaping right there and he would have fallen right on those."

Two minutes passed before the child, a 2-year-old boy, fell into his arms.

Konopacki told the newspaper he hasn’t fully grasped the magnitude of the dramatic rescue. His mind was racing the entire time. “Don’t drop him,” he commanded himself. “Don’t miss.”

He almost did.

As the boy fell, “I leaned over and caught him, but just barely,” he said.

Konopacki  and his coworkers had been joking back and forth with the 2-year-old, "playing Marco Polo and stuff,” he said. The play left him with an uneasy, foreboding feeling because the boy had been pushing on the screen.

So Konopacki stayed behind when his coworkers left the job site to fetch more tools.

Jackson Police Lt. Elmer Hitt said the boy may be alive as a result.

“ … If that guy had not caught the kid, it would not have been good,” Hitt told the newspaper. “”It would have been serious, if not fatal.”