Florida man drowning in ditch saved by others who were hauling out flooded items
GENEVA, Fla. - One of the dangers of flooding covering roads is you can’t see what’s beneath – or if there’s anything beneath you at all. That’s what put one senior in danger on Thursday evening in Geneva, Florida.
Fortunately, there were people nearby who heard his cries and came to his rescue.
Chadwin Coutant and David McDonald say they spent the day boating back and forth between Geneva and Whitmore, salvaging what they could from flooded homes.
And then, "I was backing the boat up, and I paused real quick and got out and all I heard was, ‘Help, help!" said Coutant. "Me and an officer ran down the road about a quarter mile and there’s a man laying by the side of the ditch."
"What it was, was there’s a hole. He was trying to walk in the road by the water and fell in that hole," explained McDonald.
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"I don’t know if he went under or not, but if no one was here, it would be very scary," said Coutant.
That group and a deputy say they got the man into the bed of a truck and called an ambulance.
"He wasn’t really talking much," Coutant recalled. "He was definitely in shock. He was a lot older, he was not expecting falling in a ditch, he was fully dressed. He was having trouble standing up on his own. He wasn’t saying much, just saying thank you."
It’s something the community spent the entire day talking about.
"You’re not going to find a greater community in the entire world," said McDonald. "I always call Geneva a little piece of paradise. Part of that paradise is that all the people that live here always pull together."
The Seminole County Sheriff’s Office plans to have people stationed in the area at night to make sure something like this doesn’t happen again.