Jaw-dropping surveillance footage captured the heroic moment a pawnshop owner caught a baby falling off a countertop this week.
The widely circulated video shows two women, believed to be the baby’s mother and grandmother, shopping for a rifle at Utah pawnshop Family Pawn.
As one of the women inspects the gun, the baby sitting beside her on the counter starts falling head-first towards the ground.
In a split-second, the store’s manager, Bill Reel, rushes to catch the baby just before it hits the ground.
“You’re just an ordinary person who happened to have the opportunity to do something good, and you did it,” Reel told ABC4 Utah, adding that he’s not a hero.
“I just saw the baby look unsteady, and I just booked it that way,” he added. “I just so happened to time it out just right and caught the baby just before it hit.”
Reel said the distance from the countertop to the concrete floor was just over one metre.
“I was scared to death, and I grabbed the baby. My heart was racing,” Reel, a father of four children himself, added. “I held the baby for a couple of seconds, and then I gave it back to, I believe, grandma.”
“There is no doubt that would have been a serious injury, if not a brain injury as well,” Reel told Fox13. “It was going head-first into the concrete.”
Luckily, the baby wasn’t injured and was promptly returned to the parent.
“We got lucky,” he said. “I just think we all have to do a better job at being careful and watching our kids and other people’s kids, too.”
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