An 86-year-old woman and her dog almost drowned after she accidentally drove her SUV into a slough. The senior citizen didn’t know how to swim and she couldn’t open the door as her car sank into the water. But two men who saw the incident quickly went into action and saved them both from a watery end.
Two bystanders heroically saved them both
On July 5, Marjorie Flavel was driving on Highway 20 in Saskatchewan, Canada, when she went over a large bump near the shoulder of the road that caused her to lose control of her SUV. That’s when it barreled straight into the water-filled ditch nearby.
“The car turned – it didn’t roll, thank goodness,” Flavel told CJME. “It just turned into the water, and then started sinking.”
When the vehicle began filling with water, Flavel feared she would drown because she couldn’t swim and didn’t have enough strength to push the door open. Her dog, Angel, had found her way out of her kennel and was scooped up by the woman as the car floor flooded with water.
“I tried to get the window breaker out of the glove compartment,” she recalled, “and everything was just floating out of the glove compartment. I couldn’t find it. … I thought I was dead.”
Fortunately, she saw two men who had witnessed the incident trudging toward the vehicle as the water reached the woman’s chest. Matt Mario and her father had pulled over to the side of the road a few minutes earlier and waited for emergency vehicles to arrive on the scene, but sensing the immediate danger the woman was in, Mario jumped into the water.
“I had so much adrenaline pumping,” he said. “I find myself getting into situations like this quite often, and each time I’m learning how to keep more calm.”
After Mario wasn’t able to get the doors open either, the woman told him that the sunroof could be cranked open by hand. Upon it opening wide enough, Flavel told him to save the dog first, before he attempted to pull the woman out of the car.
“She still had her seatbelt on because she was just in shock a little bit,” Mario recounted to CBC. “It was a very tight space in that sunroof. So it was kind of tough to get her out. But I got her out, got her sitting on the roof.”
With the assistance of another bystander, Alex Agarai, both Flavel and her dog were safely brought to the shore. As luck would have it, the woman didn’t suffer any major injuries, so she told the 911 dispatcher than she was thankfully fine.
“I said I didn’t get hurt so they didn’t need to send an ambulance,” she said, “I’m like, at least it wasn’t a hearse.”
“Both of them are my angels and heroes,” Flavel said of the men who rescued her. “So they should be awarded with the hero [medal] because they were tremendous.”
