Hamilton man saves woman, infant from drowning

By Chad Fell
Courtesy of the Northwest Alabamian

BEAR CREEK — First responders are usually the ones saving lives, but a unique situation brought first responders forward to  honor a man who saved the life of a mother, her baby and her unborn child from the waters of Bear Creek.
Dylan Lucas, of Hamilton, and his family were at the Twin Forks swimming area grilling out and enjoying the water June 23, when he noticed something strange a few feet away.
Lucas was swimming when he noticed a man going under the water and coming back up, pointing toward a woman, he recalled.
“I noticed the mother was kind of fluttering around in the water, like she was struggling,” he added. “It looked like she was drowning.
“She wasn’t really going underwater. It looked like she was struggling to stay above water,” Lucas pointed out.
“At that point, I didn’t see the baby. I didn’t even know the baby was under water,” he said.
Lucas swam about 20 yards over to the couple,  got the woman out of the water and carried her to the shore,  handing her to a bystander, at which time the woman spit up water and started saying the word baby, he recalled.
“The dad was (also) pointing saying baby, and at this point, I didn’t know a baby was in the water. I just thought I was saving the mother,” Lucas said.
Lucas dove back into the water and swam out to the area where the couple had been located.
“About seven to eight feet down is where I found the child,” Lucas pointed out.
The 1-year-old child was found unconscious in the shallow water.
“(The child) was lying on its back in the sand,” recalled Lucas.
Lucas removed the child from the water, placed the child above his head, went to the shore and handed the child to its mother, he said.
Another bystander at the scene performed CPR on the child with medics from the Bear Creek Fire Department, assisted by the Phil Campbell Rescue Squad, also providing assistance.
“The call we got was possibly a drowning or a baby had been run over by a boat,” stressed Bear Creek Firefighter Eric Mills. “That’s the call 9-1-1 gave us. That’s all we had to go by.”
Also responding to the scene were Bear Creek Police, Franklin County Sheriff’s Office, Alabama Game and Fish and Bear Creek Development Authority.
The mother and her infant child were transported by Phil Campbell Rescue Squad ambulance  to the Phillips Schools ball field, where a landing zone had been set up for two medical helicopters, stated Bear Creek Fire Chief Adam Loden.
The child was airlifted to Children’s Hospital in Birmingham, with the mother airlifted for additional treatment at North Mississippi Medical Center in Tupelo, first responders on the scene said.
“(Dylan) basically saved a life,” Loden said. “He saved a little child from drowning.”
“If it wasn’t for Dylan, we could have had a bad situation,” added Mills. “Luckily, he got to the (child) when he did, or we would have been doing a search for a baby.”
“I didn’t even think about it,” Lucas recalled. “I just noticed that they were struggling and did what any good human being is supposed to do in that moment.
“It was just second nature,” he added. “I’m a father myself.”
After the rescue, Lucas learned the mother he had saved was also pregnant, so, in all, Lucas helped to save three lives, town officials said.
Bear Creek Mayor Rob Taylor stressed the town would honor Lucas by presenting him a special Life Saving Award on stage at the town’s Friendship Festival, which was held at Twin Forks Park July 6.
“There are not a lot of people that would jump up and take action the way he did,” Taylor said. “It’s a great thing to find those people, and they should be honored.
“That is absolutely the least we could do for this guy. He’s a hero in anybody’s book.”
Bear Creek Police Chief Eddie Collins, who presented the plaque to Lucas in the presence of the mayor and fire officials, told those at the festival he knows of heroes every day in his line of work.
“But every now and then, there comes a time that someone does a selfless act to save the life of someone, and it is not even their job,” Collins said.
Collins told the audience at the festival how the mother, carrying the small child, had gone into the water, but had accidentally dropped the child into the water.
Collins also described the heroic efforts saving the mother and child, met by applause from the audience.
“We all got together and decided that act needed some type of recognition,” Collins stated…