Dramatic images recorded with the body cameras of two police officers florida police show the harrowing moments when they rescue a four-year-old boy with autismwhich floated dangerously in a pond.
Hillsborough County Sheriff’s Office officers responded to Valleyridge Court just before 10:30 a.m. Tuesday after a 911 call from a man concerned about a small boy who had run across a street and plunged into a nearby pondaccording to a police statement.
Two officers, a woman and a man, arrived at the scene and immediately began searching the water for the child.
“Right there, at the edge of the water. Do you see his head? He’s sitting right there, at the edge of the water,” the sheriff’s deputy tells her colleague in the video, in which the boy’s groans can be heard.
According to the statement, the youngest was kept afloat by the thick bushes from the edge of the pond, which aggravated the situation.
“I’m going to get soaked, I’m going to go get him,” says the officer, and his colleague replies: “I don’t know how he got there.”
Both agents make their way through the tall grass and brush before rescue the childwho was only wearing a diaper.
“I’m sinking into the ground,” says the policeman before handing the child over to his partner.
After rescuing him, the agents discovered that the little one did not speak.
“I kept sinking and sinking, I don’t know how far this would have gone,” said the agent, after the three were safe.
“I could barely hold him because my feet were sinking in so much,” the police officer confessed. “It would have been a bad day.”
While the officers talk, the video shows how the agent dries the little boy with a towel and keeps him warm in a front seat of the police car.
According to the authorities, the child did not sustain life-threatening injuries and reunited with his family.
“I shudder to think of the outcome had it not been for the tenacity and efforts of these deputies,” the sheriff stated. Chad Chronister. “Now we will work with the Department of Children and Families to determine if negligence played a role in the disappearance of this child“.
The investigation to clarify the facts is ongoing.
Similar incidents that have occurred recently in Florida have not always had a happy ending. Last June, in Charlotte County, it was Four-year-old Evelyn K. Geer, suffering from autism, found deadon the bank of a canal behind the rental house where he stayed with his family.
In April, two brothers 13-year-old twins drowned in a Miami-Dade pondafter one accidentally fell into the water and the other jumped in to try and save him.
