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TAIPEI, Aug. 31 (AFP): A three-year-old girl in Taiwan survived being thrown into the air in a terrifying half-minute flight after being caught in the tail of a kite at a weekend festival.
Dramatic footage captured the girl’s ordeal in the city of Hsinchu.
The first gasps of excitement as the big pink kite took off turned to screams of horror as onlookers realized that the boy had tangled in the tail and taken him for a ride.
The strong wind propelled the kite for a 31-second flight as the girl swayed and moved in the air.
The kite eventually fell and the crowd was able to free the girl unharmed.
Hsinchu Mayor Lin Chih-chien said the girl suffered some scratches on her face and was terrified of the ordeal, but otherwise unharmed.
“The city government expresses its deepest apologies to the girl and the public,” he said on Facebook.
Footage of the incident quickly went viral.
“Everyone at the scene was almost scared to death. It really happened in the blink of an eye,” wrote a blogger, who goes by the name of Via, in a Facebook post with a video of the accident that took more than 1.61 million visits.
A 34-year-old man, identified by his last name Lin, told the Apple Daily that he helped land the girl when the kite’s tail lowered low enough.
“At first I thought it was some kind of stunt show … then I thought we couldn’t drop the kid,” he said. – AFP
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