California tot survives three-story fall, saved by couple with mattress

[March 20, 2014]  LOS ANGELES (Reuters) — A California toddler survived a three-story fall, saved by a couple who were moving into a new home and threw a mattress under the boy before he plunged to the ground, fire officials and local media said.

The couple called emergency responders after spotting the 3-year-old as he was about to make his fall in a Los Angeles suburb on Sunday. They had already plucked him from danger by the time rescuers arrived, the Burbank Fire Department said in a statement.

Konrad and Jennifer Lighter told local television station ABC7 they saw the child clamber out an apartment building's third-floor window and dangle over an alley from a cable. They quickly set down the box spring mattress they had been carrying and positioned it as best they could.

"It didn't seem real until he was kind of hanging from that cord, because you know there's no way he's going to get back in the window, it's kind of now up to Konrad to catch him," Jennifer Lighter told the station.

"I kind of grabbed him and lowered him real fast to the box spring," Konrad Lighter told ABC7. "I was getting ready because I knew he couldn't get back to the window and he fell and I caught him."

Representatives from the Burbank police and fire departments did not immediately return calls on Wednesday. The Burbank Fire Department did not name the couple, but posted an online photo of the pair identified in media reports as Konrad and Jennifer Lighter.

(Reporting by Alex Dobuzinskis; editing by Cynthia Johnston and Tom Brown)

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