Florida Man Saves Toddlers From Drowning after Mom’s Jeep Crashes
An observant and brave Florida man became a hero last weekend. Three children (8, 2, and 4 months) owe him their lives. It’s a bit of a pattern with a different Florida man resecuing a pregnant woman from a sinking car last week.
Casey Curtis was driving home from work on a Sunday afternoon and, luckily, he glanced in his rearview mirror. “There was somebody behind me I noticed, driving. Then, all of a sudden, I looked up, and they seemed to be accelerating and drove off the side of the road.”
The road in question runs through rural pastures in Indiantown, Florida. An irrigation canal flows parallel to the road.
Curtis made a U-turn, called 911, and followed the vehicle’s tracks off-road. He found a red Jeep rolled over and sinking into the canal. He heard children screaming for help. So he dove in after them.
The SUV had rolled onto its side, and Curtis had to lift it out away from the vehicle to open it, but was able to wrestle it open. “I got to the car, opened up the door, and there were three kids sitting there, staring at me, helpless.”
First, Curtis got each child out of the car and transported them to the canal bank. Once they were safe, he went searching for the driver. Shyenique Wilkins had suffered a seizure, and she was trapped in her seat with her head submerged underwater. Curtis began mouth-to-mouth resuscitation.
“I lifted the mom’s head up out of the water, and she wasn’t breathing,” Curtis said. “I gave her a breath, and as soon as I gave her a breath, she started breathing again.”
When first responders arrived, they extracted Wilkins from the vehicle. Then they transported the entire family to Lawnwood Medical Center. The children are healthy, and Wilkins was on a ventilator for days. Midweek, the family reported, “She is now off the ventilator and continuing to improve.”
Curtis admits, the family might have perished if not for his heroic intervention. “There was nobody around, and there definitely would not have been anybody that would have seen this car for who knows how long. Those kids would not have been able to open that door or bust the window out, so there’s no way of them surviving.”
He urges everyone to keep Wilkins in their thoughts and prayers and donate to the family’s medical expenses GoFundMe.
