A man in China is being hailed as a hero after he stopped everything he was doing to rescue an elderly woman who fell through thin ice on a frozen river.
In the video released by CCTV, the man is seen risking his own life to save the 70-year-old woman, lying on his stomach on the edge of the still-frozen portion of the river.
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The man then uses the woman’s sleeve to pull her closer to dry land, smashing the ice and becoming submerged in the waist-deep water himself before a second Good Samaritan jumps in to help.
The original rescuer then picks the woman over and pulls her out of the water.
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The South China Morning Post identified the man as 54-year-old Shi Lei, who saw the woman fall into the river while he was riding his bike last week in Baoding, in China’s Hebei province.
Shi said he didn’t have time to think about the temperature of the water before he sprang into action.
“It was really freezing in the water, but I didn’t have time to think about it…” he said.
Shi helped the woman return to her home, assisted by other passersby and grateful members of her family.
After the rescue, Shi returned to his daily responsibilities. First, he went home and took a shower before drinking a bowl of ginger water and heading to work.
It is unclear how the woman fell into the water.
(H/T: ABC News)