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Title: Teens sucked into drainage culvert come out battered, but alive
Source:
Sun Herald
URL Source: http://www.sunherald.com/2012/08/31 ... ked-into-drainage-culvert.html
Published: Sep 1, 2012
Author: KAREN NELSON
Post Date: 2012-09-01 21:45:38 by A K A Stone
Keywords: None
Views: 367
JACKSON COUNTY -- Parker Isaacson and Chesney Cummins had no idea that playing in the swift-running water that was draining off Wolf Ridge Road in their neighborhood Thursday could cost them their lives. They saw it as the best place to ride their inner tubes. The water was more than a foot or two deep at the intersection of Wolf Ridge and Timber Ridge Drive in the Three Rivers community. It was running high and strong and it was swirling swiftly in one spot. All the more fun. But what was causing the swirl was a culvert they couldn't see beneath the water that had been installed by the county for drainage. And it was that culvert, a 30-inch pipe, that sucked both the teens underground, into a system of pipes, and almost drown them before spiting them out in a neighbor's yard more than two city blocks away. They emerged battered. A neighbor said that seeing them hollering and coming out of the drain pipe stunned him. He said it gave him nightmares. Both are 15. Parker, who moved here from Michigan in April and goes to East Central High School, is about 6 feet tall and 150 pounds. Chesney, who is home-schooled and lives next door to him, is closer to 5-foot-8 and 135 pounds. They were playing with their siblings and friends in the water. Parker said his mother had told them not to play at the intersection, but they disobeyed. Chesney was stepping out of the tube and just put her feet down near the swirl when it sucked her in, Parker said. She said she remembers hearing a sucking sound and being able to get out one scream for help before she went fully into the mouth of the pipe. He went in to the water to get her, grabbed her legs and was sucked in behind her. Once in the pipe, it was completely dark. The pipe had ridges in areas where Parker kept bumping his head. He tried to find Chesney. All the while, they were moving underground with the water. At first the pipe had room at the top to breathe, he said. Then the further they got into the system, the less air space there was. He felt her at one point and they were together briefly, then he lost her, he said. She said she didn't realize that he was in the pipe with her. But she did feel a head of hair at one point briefly and knew she was with someone. He tried to talk to her under water but couldn't. Then they were separated. As they moved through the pipe, water filled more of it and the space for air disappeared. He said he just gave up. "I thought I would die," he said. She said the same. "When there was no air at the top, I started to breathe water," she said. "There was no way of breathing. I just gave up and stopped fighting." Things went through her head -- "What if my parents can't find me?" "What if there are bars at the end and I can't get out?" She said she started floating. "That's the closest to death any teenager could be," she said, "stuck underground in water." She was afraid the pipe would get smaller or that she would be too weak to crawl out. Parker said, "For me, it felt like forever, but it was maybe five minutes." Then from darkness, he saw murky water and he popped out. They were both dumped into standing water in Glenn Moyer's yard. He saw them crawling up. "I thought they were just playing down there, then all of a sudden she came up," Moyer said. The other kids on the road were screaming, "They're alive. They're alive," he said. Parker climbed out through ants and was bitten all over his arms, but that didn't compare to their other injuries -- her broken nose, bruised ribs and stitches in her face and right leg. He has a badly bruised upper leg and abrasions on his nose. They both had scrapes all over and sore joints. On Friday, she walked with a distinct limp. Their mothers, Heather Cummins and Lori Lackey, saw them walking home down the road in shock, with Chesney covered in blood. Neighbors had called the Sheriff's Department and rescue teams that were all around the area to deal with the aftermath of Hurricane Isaac came quickly -- police cars and fire trucks. Medics checked both teens before their parents took them to the hospital. Cummins, Chesney's mother, said one deputy said to her, "Do you realize the magnitude of this? Do you realize what happened?" "He said it was serious," she said, "that they were lucky to be alive, period." Read more here: http://www.sunherald.com/2012/08/31/4158781/teens-sucked-into-drainage-culvert.html#storylink=cpy
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