Associated Press

Hong Kong, April 24:

A four-year-old boy in Hong Kong survived a nine-storey fall from an apartment after his parents left him home alone, police and newspapers said today. The boy, who’d apparently climbed out of a window to look for his parents, lived because his plunge yesterday morning was broken by tree branches and he landed in a flower bed, the South China Morning Post newspaper quoted police superintendent Alan Crowther as saying. He was hospitalised in serious condition with eye, face and thigh injuries, said police spokeswoman Cherry Yau. The parents had left the boy by himself at home and later reported him missing after they couldn’t find him in their apartment in suburban Sheung Shui, said Yau. The child apparently fell after climbing out of an open window in the living room to look for his mother and father, Yau said.

It was the third time in two months that children in Hong Kong had been left unattended and fallen from their high-rise homes. Children’s rights activists urged the government to punish parents involved in such cases, the newspaper reported. The other two boys also survived their falls, the paper said.