I saved a baby who was falling from the fifth floor, risking my own life: everyone called me a hero, but a week later the child’s parents sued me for a “reckless rescue”

I was walking down the street, hurrying to work. An ordinary morning, nothing unusual. I was thinking about my own things, watching where I stepped, when suddenly a loud crash came from above. I looked up and saw a window shatter on the fifth floor. Glass shards flew down, and immediately after that something began to fall.

A second later I realized—it was a child.

There was no time to think. I just ran forward, raised my arms, and caught the baby. We fell together onto the asphalt. I hit my head and back hard, everything went dark before my eyes, but the child was alive. He was crying, and that meant it hadn’t been in vain.

People immediately gathered around us. Someone called an ambulance, others searched for the child’s parents. They held me and told me not to close my eyes. Everyone kept repeating the same thing: that I was a hero, that I had saved a life.

At the hospital they said I had a concussion and bruises. I was in pain, but it didn’t matter. The most important thing was that the child was alive and safe. I didn’t even know whether his parents had been found or what would happen to him next.

But a week later, I received a court summons.