WATCH: Manager catches baby falling headfirst off Utah store counter
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Katie Karalis, KTVX
HURRICANE, Utah (KTVX/CNN) – A pawn shop manager and father of four rushed into action to save a baby from what could have been a dangerous headfirst fall onto concrete.
Surveillance video shows two women shopping for a gun Sunday afternoon at Family Pawn in Hurricane, Utah. They place a child on the glass counter next to them.
Store manager Bill Reel noticed the baby starting to fall and hurried to help, catching the child before they could hit the floor.
“I just saw the baby look unsteady, and I just booked it that way,” Reel said. “I just so happened to time it out just right and caught the baby just before it hit.”
Reel says the baby was falling headfirst in what would have been an almost 4-foot drop onto concrete. Thanks to the manager’s quick action, the baby was not injured.
“I was scared to death. I grabbed the baby. My heart was racing. I was pretty shaken up,” Reel said. “I held the baby for a couple of seconds and then gave it back to, I believe, grandma. There’s no doubt that baby was gonna get hurt, and I think there was even a risk of some brain injury.”
Though some have called him a hero, Reel says he’s simply a father of four with quick reflexes, who knows how suddenly accidents can happen.
“You’re just an ordinary person who happened to have the opportunity to do something good, and you did it,” he said.
Reel says the story is an example of the many things that can go wrong when you take an eye off your kids, even for just a second.
“It could’ve gone south. It could’ve gone bad, and it didn’t,” he said. “We got lucky. I just think we all have to do a better job of being careful and watching our children and other people’s children, too.”