Three men rescue woman and grandson from high water
By Lindsay Marshall
The Community News
Shirley Hutton had just passed through the water not but five minutes ago. It was early Monday evening and it had just begun to storm. As she came back to take her grandson home on the road she had just passed through, she didn’t realize the water over Jenkins Road had gotten higher. By the time she knew her Ford van wasn’t going to make it, that the water had gotten too high in a short time, it was too late.
“I should’ve gone back, but I didn’t,” she said.
The creek off the road had flooded and the water was getting higher by the minute. The van stalled and she felt it start to give in the current. She knew she had to get out of the van before it took them with it. Although she couldn’t swim, the 67-year-old grandmother grabbed her seven-year-old grandson, Reid Smith, lifted him as high as she could, and fought her way to a fence to keep her steady until help had arrived.
“I had him as high as I could get him and I was NOT letting go, no matter what. I walked as far as I could but I was afraid I’d lose my footing and fall with him,” she said.
For more on this story, see the July 27 issue of The Community News.