A car floats in a drainage pond at County Road 144 and Whiteland Road in Bargersville. Good samaritans rescued the female driver before first responders reached the scene.
Submitted photo
Good samaritans’ instincts saved a young woman whose car was sinking into a Bargersville drainage pond.
Brandon Brown, of Indianapolis, was driving a dump truck about 11:30 a.m. Monday near the intersection of County Road 144 and Whiteland Road, and instinctually stopped after he witnessed the accident. The woman unconsciously drove at least 30 feet around the roundabout before her car went through the grass and into the drainage pond near Center Grove Bantam Football League due to a medical emergency, officials and witnesses said.
Before he even realized what he was doing, Brown took action.
“I was headed west on Whiteland Road and I [saw] a car go into a pond. A couple of cars in front of me just went about their business,” Brown said. “Before my brain could register what was going on, I put my truck in park and was calling 911 and I was headed over to help.”
He waded into the roughly three-foot-deep water with just one concern: making sure the woman didn’t sink deeper into the pond.
“When you see a car go into a pond, that’s not normal. I wasn’t going to just see that and not do anything. My instinct was to not let the car sink and get whoever that person is out,” Brown said.
Billy Clements, another Indianapolis man working in the area for Ray’s Trash Service, came upon the scene and pulled over the help. He saw several people gathered at the shore and noticed there was a woman in the car that was still floating but on the verge of sinking, he said.
He noticed Brown was trying to get her out. Brown opened the car door to try to get her out, but stopped because the car started sinking lower. Together, they tried a new strategy. One held up the car while the other got the driver’s attention, Clements said.
The woman was hard to reach because she was in and out of consciousness due to a medical emergency. The men got her attention and eventually, she was able to turn on the key and roll down the driver’s side window, they said.
The men pulled her through the window and a short distance to the shore, where a doctor and several others had gathered to help, Brown said. First responders arrived shortly after that.
Initially, first responders did not know who saved the woman, because the good samaritans left the scene before they were able to get their names, said Mike Pruitt, assistant chief of the Bargersville Community Fire Department.
Brown, who works for EZ Transport, was in the area for work, but wasn’t supposed to be at that intersection at that time. A last-minute adjustment to his schedule led him to the right place at the right time, he said.
“It was a blessing that I was there,” he said.
Brown’s co-worker, Arthur Mitchell, also helped at the scene, by taking over the 911 call after Brown dove into the water to help, Brown said.
The men aren’t heroes, they said. They were just doing something they hope anyone else would do in the same situation, Clements said.
“My dad died a couple of weeks ago. He was our hero. He did so much for people. He helped homeless people. He taught us to help others. That was somebody’s baby in the water and I had to help them,” Clements said.
The woman was OK at the scene, but was transported to an area hospital to be checked out due to a medical emergency, said Jeremy Roll, spokesperson for the Bargersville Police Department.
