Off-duty officer rescues father, son from sewage well in Xinjiang

(ECNS) — A police officer in Hejing County, Xinjiang Uygur Autonomous Region, has rescued a 5-year-old boy and his father after the two became trapped in an uncovered sewage well filled with roughly three meters of sewage.

The boy had been playing near his home when he accidentally fell into the well. His father then jumped in after him, but with the sewage about three meters deep, both were left trapped.

Liu, the officer, was off duty and washing his car at a car wash about 30 meters away when he sensed something was wrong. He quickly ran over to the well and saw a hand reaching out of the sewage, with no one else in sight.

Shouting for help, Liu dashed back to the car wash, grabbed a cleaning mop and hurried back to the well. The surface of the sewage was about 1.5 meters below the opening. Leaning in, he stretched the mop down to the outstretched hand, and once it was grasped, he pulled upward with all his strength until the heads of the father and child finally broke through the surface.

After the rescue, the boy's father and his family visited the Hejing County Public Security Bureau to present Liu with a banner of thanks. The father said the sewage was so deep he could not touch the bottom and the well walls were extremely slippery. Without Liu and other kind-hearted people at the scene, he said, neither he nor his child would have made it out.

(By intern Wu Jingjing)