A 7-year-old boy is praised after he swam for an hour to shore to call for help for his father and little sister who got caught in a powerful current during a trip on Florida's St. John's river.
The boy's father, Steven Proust, said that he was fishing on an anchored boat at the river while his son Chase and 4-year-old daughter Abigail were playing.
Chase reported that the current was too strong and his sister could not hold onto the boat, so he had to jump off to save her. Abigail was luckily wearing a life jucket.
The 7-year-old told Jax 4 TV:
"I felt really scared."
After their father went in the water to get her, Chase started swimming toward the shore to get help.
He said:
"I told them I loved him because I wasn't sure what's going to happen," the father said. "I tried to stick with both of them. I wore myself out. She drifted away from me."
Despite having difficulty swimming against the current, Chase carried on until he made it to the shore.
Chase explained:
"The current was going the opposite way of going to the boat and the shore so it was very hard to swim that way."
It took about an hour for Chase to reach the shore, and as soon as he made it, he ran to a restaurant nearby and called for help.
Rescuers later found Steven and Abigail almost a mile away from the boat.
Steven told reporters:
"I screamed for help at the top of my lungs and waved my arms and sure enough someone heard us. Little man also made it to shore and got help and that's what saved our lives."
Eric Prosswimmer, a firefighter who assisted in the family's rescue said that boy and the father were not required to wear a life vest as the law only applies to children under six for a boat under 26 feet long.
[h/t: I heart Intelligence]
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