HURRICANE, Utah (KSTU) — Surveillance video from inside a Utah pawn shop shows a store employee saving a child from what could have been a dangerous tumble.
Saturday afternoon, two adult women were shopping for a firearm inside Family Pawn in Hurricane.
As they were looking over a gun, one of the women placed a young child on the store’s counter. The child then lost balance and started to fall toward the floor.
Luckily, store manager Bill Reel was standing a few feet away and noticed the child in the dangerous situation.
“I reacted, probably within an 8th of a second,” Reel said. “I saw the baby bob just enough to show me that it could barely hold itself up and I just ran toward it.”
The video shows Reel catching the child a few feet before hitting the ground.
“There is no doubt that would have been a serious injury, if not a brain injury as well,” Reel said. “It was going headfirst into the concrete.”
Reel estimates the baby was about 7 months old. He was unsure if the child was a boy or a girl. He is happy he was in the right place at the right time.
“I held the baby for a second or two and just collected my own thoughts and realized we avoided disaster there,” Reel said.
Reel, who himself is a father of four children, hopes this serves as an example to parents that every young child always needs to be in the shadow of a watchful eye.
“I think life is precious and being a parent is hard enough. I would suggest parents just be careful,” Reel said.