Four-year-old Californian boy — Sebastion Johnson — has woken from a medically induced coma, 10 days after falling over 23 storeys down a cliff face while walking with his family.
Sebastian was walking along a path with his family, all of them throwing rocks over a cliff edge, when he slipped and fell. His horrified family helplessly watching on as their baby boy plummeted over 70 metres down a sheer cliff face.
“I bent down to pick up a rock, and he bent down to pick up a rock. He got his rock first,” his mother, Jamie Guglielmino, told the ABC 7 News. “By the time I turned around to tell him not to go near the edge, he was already stepping off of it, trying to throw a rock.”
Jamie screamed in horror as Sebastion disappeared.
“I was screaming, ‘My baby, my baby,’” she recalls. “I dove for him … I was six inches away from catching his hood. I watched him tumble and fall down the cliff bank.”
His father, Daryl Johnson said: “I just threw everything off — my backpack, my hat — and just ran. I was ready to jump down myself and get him. I tried to find every access I could to get down there. I was trying to look for him, I couldn’t see him.”
Rescue services abseiled down and were shocked to find little Sebastion had survived the drop. His left side had taken the brunt of the fall — broken bones, a jaw that needed wiring and a shaken skull …. but he was alive.
What happened next?
Nobody was sure how the little fellow survived the fall — but the injuries he received were sufficient to put him a medically-induced coma.
To his parents astonishment he woke up from that coma, just 10 days after the fall, allowing mum to hold him for the first time since the accident.
His recovery will take time, but he is now healthy enough to hold the hands of his family. It’s a complete miracle.
Another toddler
survives balcony fall
Hearing about this tale of survival reminds us of something that happened to a guy overseas earlier last year.
Paul was on the trip of a lifetime. After travelling through parts of Europe with friends, he spent September on the solo part of his adventure in Barcelona.
Paul explains: “I had been sampling some Spanish beers on La Rambla and had come back to my accommodation. I ended up crashing out on the lounge while watching some Spanish television when I thought I heard knocking. I just ignored it — I mean, nobody knew me in Spain.”
Paul’s unexpected guests were here — and one of them was naked!
“However, the knocking persisted and about 10 minutes later I awoke again.
“It sounded like it was coming from the kitchen so I got up and could see what looked like people on my balcony. I turned on the balcony light to investigate further, and sure enough … people. On my fifth floor balcony.
“I open the door and am greeted by three firefighters and a chubby, naked toddler — all speaking rapid Spanish at once. What the…?”
After walking his new, unexpected guests through the apartment to the front door, Paul and his entourage were greeted by police and ambulance officers, which confused the non-Spanish speaking, and still half-asleep, traveller even further. Upon realising that Paul did not speak a word of Spanish, one English-speaking officer managed to explain what had happened.
Paul says; “The kid, who had been staying another two storeys up — so on the seventh floor — had somehow managed, while mum and dad weren’t looking, to climb over the balcony railing when he slipped and fell. He hit an awning that was loosely hung from the roof of my balcony, then a clothes line which miraculously propelled him onto my balcony without so much as a scratch, just some bruises.
“It was incredible. And certainly not an experience that was in any of the brochures!”
Pretty incredible, right? How long the run down the stairs must have seemed for those parents who would have had no idea what to expect when they got to the fifth floor. I wish I could go to that kids 21st party.
Maybe Paul will get invited back?
