A 37-year-old banker from Turin is being hailed as a hero after he miraculously caught a child who fell from a fifth-floor balcony on Saturday, CNN reports.

Mattia Aguzzi said he and his girlfriend were on their way to a bakery in central Turin shortly before 11 a.m. local time on Saturday when he heard a man calling for help from an upstairs apartment, News.ro reported, citing CNN.

“I went out with my girlfriend to buy bread and we heard screams from a building that caught our attention,” he told Sky24, speaking outside a hospital where he was being treated for minor injuries. “I heard a man scream when I saw a little girl leaning over the edge of the balcony. The little girl leaned more and more and climbed on the edge. She was holding on only with her hands, and her legs were in the air,” Aguzzi said.

He said he shouted to try to get the three-year-old’s attention to stop her from climbing further, but when he realized she couldn’t hear him, he calculated her trajectory and stood where he thought she would fall.

“I started yelling at her not to move and to go inside, but she didn’t hear. When I saw her fall, I stood in her way, closed my eyes and hoped that everything would be fine. I blocked her, absorbing the impact of the fall and we both fell to the ground,” he said. “At first I felt no signs of life, then the baby started crying and I breathed a sigh of relief,” he said.

The girl’s parents, realizing what had happened, went outside, and emergency teams took the girl to the hospital. The man said that the girl’s parents are in a state of shock, but everything is “fine” with the girl.

“Extraordinary gesture”

Turin Mayor Stefano Lo Russo called for Aguzzi to be honored. “The actions of Mattia Aguzzi, our fellow citizen, who saved the life of a little girl who fell from the fifth floor this morning by picking her up from a flight, is a heroic and extraordinary gesture,” Lo Russo wrote in a Facebook post. .

Parliamentarian Camilla Laureti also said she hoped the man would be awarded a national medal. “I propose a Gold Medal for civic valor to #MattiaAguzzi, who saved a girl who fell from the fifth floor, risking his safety and possibly his own life!” she wrote in a post on the social network X (formerly Twitter).

Italian Prime Minister Giorgia Maloni thanked the banker. “The story of a little girl who fell from the balcony of an apartment on the fifth floor of a building in Turin could have turned into a tragedy. But thanks to the speed of Mattia Aguzzi, who saw her fall and caught her in the air, her life was saved. Big honor and gratitude to this young hero,” Maloney wrote on Sunday on X.

But the banker says he is no hero. “Don’t call me a hero. I did everything so naturally. I didn’t think about anything and I just tried to do what needed to be done,” he said, before joking that his extra weight helped. “And anyway, I’m not going to be told now that it’s better if I lose a little weight. It went well. What more could we wish for? Fate brought us there. Chance, fate. As far as I know, we’re all right. And that, believe me, is the most wonderful thing.”