JINAN - A 76-year-old woman who fell out of a second-floor window in East China's Shandong province on April 6 was caught in mid-fall by a traffic cop, who received the nickname "Iron Policeman" from Chinese netizens for his impressive deed.

The 26-year-old traffic officer Hui Miao was on patrol near a residential building in the Licheng district of the provincial capital of Jinan when he received a report about an elderly woman who was sitting on her windowsill. The report indicated that she was in danger of falling from her precarious perch.

"Iron Policeman" Hui Miao directs the traffic in Jinan. [File photo]

"I ran toward the building and shouted 'please don't jump, don't take your own life," Hui recalled.

The scene was caught on video by a passerby using a mobile phone. The video shows the woman sitting on the windowsill with one leg perched on a billboard above a store located on the first story of the building.

The video shows the woman moving her other leg out of the window to stand on the billboard, clinging to the window with her bare hands. The video then shows the billboard starting to collapse.

Hui is shown running under the woman as the billboard starts to fall down, stretching his arms to the sky to try and catch her. Although the force of her fall nearly knocked him to the ground, Hui managed to prevent the woman from hitting the ground.

Both Hui and the woman were rushed to hospital after the incident. The woman suffered a minor fracture in her left ankle, while Hui suffered a sprain in his shoulder.

Hui was discharged after staying at the hospital for observation for a few days.

"Actually, my first thought was to pull her back into the window, but there was no time for me to climb to the second floor. So I did what I had to do. I caught her with my hands," Hui said.

The video was posted online and created a sensation, with Hui being hailed as the "Iron Policeman" and "Most Handsome Policeman" by netizens.

The second nickname may be a reference to the "Most Beautiful Mother," a moniker given by netizens to Wu Juping, a 31-year-old mother who saved a toddler from a 10-story plunge in East China's Zhejiang province in July 2011.

"The whole city of Jinan is proud of Hui Miao," wrote one netizen using the screenname "Shalanideweibo" on Sina Weibo, a popular Chinese microblogging site.