A great-grandmother in Melbourne has saved her great-grandson from being crushed after her ceiling collapsed on top of them.
According to Nine News, 88-year-old Nicky Panagiotidis was looking after two-year-old Harvey at her Ascot Vale home when the ceiling suddenly gave way on Tuesday afternoon.
“When she heard the roof crack she rolled over off the couch and sort of shielded my son under her chest,” Harvey’s mother Nicole Brown told Nine News.
“I just know that motherly instinct that she has went through her to be a hero – she is actually a hero for him.”
Neos Kosmos reached out to the family to find out more about the incident.
Brown and her husband Dylan work, so usually their two children Harvey and Olivia aged five, stay with her mother Julia Polimos and great-grandmother Nicky.
Polimos had taken Olivia for a walk when the ceiling collapsed.
Trapped under the debris, Panagiotidis called her and said “the ceiling is on top of me and we can’t move”.
“She must have moved very quickly to protect him. Unbelievable for someone her age. Maybe I wouldn’t have reacted so quickly,” Polimos said.
Brown said: “I was shocked when my mother called me and told me what had happened … we got home a little while after the incident.”
When she parked and got out of her car she felt some relief as her son greeted her with a “hi mummy.”
Emergency services arrived quickly and found the pair with minimal injuries.
Panagiotidis had bruising on her back and shoulders but was able to walk to the ambulance.
The 88-year-old seemed fine until she learned she would have to be hospitalised.
She even complained about the rescuer who wanted to take her to the hospital.
“She wanted to stay home,” her granddaughter said.
“‘I’m alive’ she told me. ‘It’s going to take something worse than that to kill me’.”
The first thing the great-grandmother asked Nicole was if the child was ok.
Both her and Harvey were taken to hospital and while she was discharged from the hospital on Wednesday, Harvey was on Tuesday.
Polimos said her mother was a very strong woman.
“She doesn’t buy takeaways, she always cooks home meals… Greek Mediterranean meals,” Polimos told Nine News.
Brown said “it was the unluckiest situation, with the luckiest outcome possible and we’re so grateful to my grandmother.”
The family believes a water leak may have caused the collapse after they noticed cracks and sagging a week ago.
Earlier this year another similar incident occurred when radio producer and presenter Rena Frangioudaki was injured after her apartment ceiling collapsed.