They sat in the aisle together and played.
A kind woman stopped a young, distressed boy from crying during an 8-hour international flight in a touching moment that was captured on camera.
Rochel Groner was on a flight from Brussels to New York City on July 14 with her husband when the boy started wailing.
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“He was crying and just started to shriek. It was clear to me that just from listening, [that] this was a child who didn’t have a use of a vocabulary. He was trying to communicate something,” Groner told InsideEdition.com.
Groner said that after a few minutes of hearing the boy’s cries aboard the plane, passengers started to grow weary.
“People are frustrated. People are waking up. It was a day flight, which is always a little harder,” Groner said. “The phones [on the plane] just started to ring so I’m getting thoughts in my mind we’re going to have an emergency landing. You can see people kind of craning their necks and trying to figure out what’s going on and all I’m thinking about is this poor mom; she’s probably mortified as it is.”
She decided to take matters into her own hands.
“Finally, I just got out of my seat," Groner said. "I went to the aisle where he was sitting. I just put out my hand. It was surreal. I didn’t know what I was doing. There are tears streaming down his face. He put out his hand. I just put him on my lap and just gave him a gentle but firm hug and started to rock him and he was quiet."
They sat together doodling on motion sickness bags, Groner said. She said the boy, who she thinks was around 8 years old, began to smile.
“I took another motion sickness bag and I put my hand down and I gave him the pen and together we traced my hand," Groner said. "He started to smile and he looked at me and took his glasses off and put them on his face. All of a sudden, we were friends."
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Groner said she could feel the sense of relief throughout the cabin. Her husband, Bentzion Groner, said he snapped the special photos of the encounter.
“It told me that everybody just wants a hug and to be listened to and if we’re willing to do that, we can literally change lives… I was just in awe,” he said. “One of the reasons I started snapping pictures bto remember that moment."
Additional reporting by Elissa Candiotti
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