A man has described his amazement at seeing a teenage girl get to her feet after she took a horrific fall from a sixth-floor Wollongong balcony.
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The badly injured 18-year-old landed on a concrete awning five floors down, only to then drop another storey as a police officer tried desperately to catch her at ground level.
The teen remains in a critical condition at Wollongong Hospital after suffering head injuries and multiple fractures in the fall.
Paul Walker was driving eastward on lower Crown Street about 5.30pm Monday when he heard screaming and yelling. He saw passers-by looking upward, then noticed the teen.
"She was hanging over a railing, then I saw her fall," Mr Walker, 43, of Lake Illawarra, told the Mercury.
"She landed on the roof bit above the shops. I ... could see her hair and bit of blood on the ledge. I thought she must have died for sure."
Mr Walker said he tried to console a female who he believed to be the injured teen's distraught friend.
"[She] was in the lobby ... sitting there crying and screaming. [She] came out of the doors and sat on ground still screaming. It sounded like she was saying, 'it was an accident'. She was hysterical.
It sounded like she was saying it was an accident.
- Paul Walker
"Then, the girl who fell sits up. We were trying to tell her to stay still, and were telling another couple on a balcony just above where she was to hop down and see if she is OK. Then the girl stands up. Her face was bleeding. We were still telling her to sit down, amazed how she wasn't dead. Then she walked back towards the building, stood there for a second.
Mr Walker said he waved down arriving police, who came running.
"At that stage the girl looking dazed, almost possessed-looking, and just walks off the edge onto the pavement."
Mr Walker said a police officer did his best to try and catch the teen, and managed to soften her fall. Numerous police cars and ambulances then flooded the area.
The emergency occurred outside The Crown - a large residential and commercial complex with 300 apartments, on the corner of Crown and Corrimal streets.
Mr Walker said the sights and the sounds of the night are not something he will easily forget.
The teen was taken by ambulance to Wollongong Hospital where she remained, late Tuesday.
Police have confirmed they are not treating the incident as suspicious. Inquiries into the matter are ongoing.