A man who sprang into action after witnessing a boat crash in Florida is reliving the horror of finding one of the victims caught in the vessel’s propeller by her hair, saying he’s “amazed” she survived the nightmare ordeal.
Jay Young told WFTS that he’s had trouble sleeping since diving into Seddon Channel off Davis Islands, south of Tampa, early Sunday evening after seeing a 15-foot fibreglass boat strike a piling in the water, sending overboard a man later identified as Keith Rohde, 22.“When I saw the boat approaching the piling, I said, ‘I can’t believe this guy is doing this’ and he served at the last second, and the boat hit the piling and glanced off,” Young told WFTS. “He went into the water immediately; the girl was still in the boat.”The boat then began to move in a tight circle, Young said, and the woman who has yet to be publicly identified jumped into the water. That prompted Young to jump into the drink himself in an effort to find Rohde and the woman, but he soon realized the situation was even worse than he originally surmised.“It was very wrapped around the propeller blades and down in the hub, and I was really just yanking at it to try to get it out of there because we had to get her up above the water,” Young said of the woman’s long, curly hair.
“I yelled at somebody on the shore: ‘Is there anybody with a knife?’ But nobody had anything, so it was just pulling what I could.”Miraculously, Young managed to extricate the woman from the propeller and drag her to shore, where paramedics were waiting, he said.“But she was breathing again by the time we just got her to rocks,” Young said. “I was amazed. I couldn’t believe it.”The woman was rushed to Tampa General Hospital, where her condition remains unclear, according to the station. Young, a 56-year-old technology services manager at Amalie Arena, told the Tampa Bay Times he had been just 15 or 20 feet offshore when he leapt into the water without a second thought.“I took off my shoes and jumped straight in,” he told the newspaper. Young now hopes to get a positive update on the woman whose life he helped save.“It was just an amazing coincidence that I was in the right place at the right time,” he said. “I hope she is okay.”
Jay Young told WFTS that he’s had trouble sleeping since diving into Seddon Channel off Davis Islands, south of Tampa, early Sunday evening after seeing a 15-foot fibreglass boat strike a piling in the water, sending overboard a man later identified as Keith Rohde, 22.“When I saw the boat approaching the piling, I said, ‘I can’t believe this guy is doing this’ and he served at the last second, and the boat hit the piling and glanced off,” Young told WFTS. “He went into the water immediately; the girl was still in the boat.”The boat then began to move in a tight circle, Young said, and the woman who has yet to be publicly identified jumped into the water. That prompted Young to jump into the drink himself in an effort to find Rohde and the woman, but he soon realized the situation was even worse than he originally surmised.“It was very wrapped around the propeller blades and down in the hub, and I was really just yanking at it to try to get it out of there because we had to get her up above the water,” Young said of the woman’s long, curly hair.
“I yelled at somebody on the shore: ‘Is there anybody with a knife?’ But nobody had anything, so it was just pulling what I could.”Miraculously, Young managed to extricate the woman from the propeller and drag her to shore, where paramedics were waiting, he said.“But she was breathing again by the time we just got her to rocks,” Young said. “I was amazed. I couldn’t believe it.”The woman was rushed to Tampa General Hospital, where her condition remains unclear, according to the station. Young, a 56-year-old technology services manager at Amalie Arena, told the Tampa Bay Times he had been just 15 or 20 feet offshore when he leapt into the water without a second thought.“I took off my shoes and jumped straight in,” he told the newspaper. Young now hopes to get a positive update on the woman whose life he helped save.“It was just an amazing coincidence that I was in the right place at the right time,” he said. “I hope she is okay.”