Four-year-old’s car crash escape
Updated on 24 June 2009
A four-year-old boy had a remarkable escape when he was struck by a runaway car and thrown down a flight of stairs in the Turkish town of Sanliurfa.
CCTV footage broadcast on Turkish television showed the vehicle hitting Muhammet Dirlik and the boy picking himself up and walking away.
A second taller boy can be seen running away from the fast-moving white car.
Muhammet told reporters he had been wandering around on the pavement when the car knocked into him but said he had not been hurt.
It crashed through the front window of a shop before it was hauled back up onto the street with the help of a crowd of onlookers.
It was not until the following day that Muhammet's father realised his son actually had been hit by the car.
"We understood that there was an accident when we heard the noise," Ibrahim Halil Dirlik told a local TV station. "I saw my son coming towards me crying. We were not aware that he had been hit by the car."
The driver reportedly said he swerved to avoid running over a puppy and lost control of the car.
