Firefighters Smash Window Of BMW To Save Chinese Child Inside Luxury Vehicle

Is a luxury vehicle like the BMW more precious than the life of a human, especially if it is one’s child? This seems to be the conflict in China after residents expressed online their rage at a mother who allegedly had second thoughts about smashing the window of her expensive vehicle where her young son was trapped.

The incident was one of two viral events that hit China this week, reports The Wall Street Journal. The other was a one-minute sex video of a Chinese couple taken at the fitting room of Uniqlo’s Beijing outlet and leaked over WeChat and Weibo.

The child was inside a black BMW parked at Yiwu City in Zhejiang Province. Firefighters were alerted on Saturday night that a young boy was sitting in the driver’s seat, crying and trying to open the glass window, reports Zhejiang Online. The boy was inside the car for about one hour, according to a rescuer.

When the firemen arrived, they got two locksmiths to pry the car doors open, while a large crowd gathered around the BMW. At that time, the firefighters were talking with the mother of the 17-month-old child.

However, pressure was felt as the crowd condemned the mother for allegedly refusing to break the car’s window to rescue the toddler. The report said that the locksmiths failed, so the firefighters smashed the BMW’s window to free the child.

The incident became viral and netizens joined the outcry over the perception that the mum valued the vehicle’s window over her child’s life. However, on Wednesday, the embattled woman broke – not her car window again – but her silence in an interview with Qianjiang Evening News.

She claimed that she first attempted to smash the windows using a stone and hammer but failed, which led her to seek police assistance. When the firefighters asked her if they would break the windows as the locksmiths struggled to open the door, she was silent which was misconstrued as hesitation to destroy the car’s glass.

But the unidentified woman explained that she waited for the locksmiths to finish their attempt because she was afraid that her son might be frightened by the smash and hurt by the glass shards. However, for netizens who were neither not at the scene nor understood the back story, it was easy to judge the mother’s response.

The video of the incident got more than 7.5 million views on Weibo by Thursday afternoon. Comments were mostly critical of the mother. A Weibo user wrote, “The BMW mom’s heart belongs to her car instead of her son,” quotes The Toronto Sun.

One commenter called leaving a child inside a car on a hot summer day as irresponsible parental behaviour and asked: “Do you really want your child to suffocate?” And for one Weibo member, the answer is simple – “First smash the parents, then smash the glass.”

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