The November wind cut like a blade, lifting damp, penetrating cold from the river.
In the courtyard, between chipped concrete garages, a five-year-old boy was playing.
His mother stood off to the side, phone pressed to her ear, laughing at a friend’s joke.
The boy wandered closer to the edge of the riverbank while his mother was distracted.
That day, the water was murky and turbulent—the current stronger than usual due to recent rains.
One wrong step—and with a cry, the boy plunged into the water. His heavy jacket dragged him down instantly.
The mother noticed nothing. She kept chatting on the phone, occasionally glancing around absentmindedly.
The boy tried to swim, but the current pulled him farther from shore.
He was gasping, choking, grasping at cold air.
At that moment, a man appeared on the opposite bank—someone who usually drew only scorn from locals.
A thin, scruffy man, everyone just called him “Erlich.”
A homeless man who lived in an abandoned house nearby.
A homeless man pulled a drowning boy from the river—and instead of gratitude, the mother started screaming at him.
He heard the boy’s scream and, without a second’s hesitation, dove into the icy water in his dirty clothes.
The water pummeled his legs, tried to knock him over, but he kept going until he reached the boy and grabbed him by the collar.
The child was sobbing, pale, and shivering.
Erlich dragged him to the shore and wrapped him in his tattered coat.
When he brought the boy back toward the garages, the mother finally noticed them and screamed:
— “Did you touch my son, you freak?!”
— “He was drowning…”
— “Better he’d drowned than be touched by your filthy hands!”
Erlich stared at her in shock. He felt hurt—but more than that, terrified for the boy.
To see this woman yelling at him, without even checking if her child was alive, felt unreal.
And then Erlich did something unexpected—but absolutely right.
A homeless man pulled a drowning boy from the river—and instead of gratitude, the mother started screaming at him.
He made a split-second decision: he hugged the boy close again and turned around sharply.
— “Hey! Give him back!” the woman shrieked, but didn’t dare get closer.
Erlich calmly walked out of the courtyard and approached a nearby house—the home of an elderly neighbor, a kind and attentive woman—and knocked on her door.
— “Please help the boy,” he said, breathless. “Call the police.
His mother nearly got him killed. You saw it yourself.”
The neighbor immediately dialed the number.
Soon, officers arrived and took the mother away—she kept yelling insults the entire time.
Erlich told them everything, hiding nothing.
A homeless man pulled a drowning boy from the river—and instead of gratitude, the mother started screaming at him.
After an investigation, the mother was stripped of her parental rights.
The boy stayed with the elderly neighbor temporarily, and later was placed with a foster family.
As for Erlich—he disappeared. No one saw him in the yard again.
It was only months later that people remembered that he had saved the life of a child—
a child who might have met a far worse fate if he had stayed with a mother like that.