During a hiking trip in Fundy National Park, New Brunswick, a group of swimmers had the good fortune of being found by some hikers that included an off-duty police officer who ended up saving their friend from a raging edy.
The officer, Bruce Lake, was exploring the Laverty Falls area with his wife and friends, and though being hailed as a hero, he was initially told that everything was okay.
Thankfully piercing the veil of the social contract, one of Lake’s friends said that a woman out in the water appeared to be exhausted and might need some help, and that’s when the whole party watched her disappear under the foam after making a short-lived attempt to return to shore.
“She was kind of stuck between these two little waterfalls,” Lake recalled. “She immediately went underneath and then came back up again right near the rock and then grabbed the rock and held on. So she was obviously a little scared.”
Global News quotes Dave Brosha, one of Lake’s friends, who described the events as something “out of a bad movie” after the woman disappeared a second time, but wasn’t remerging, and that’s when the aptly-named Lake made his move, jumping into the water and swimming to the rock to help.
Reaching the rock, the water was deeper than he expected, and the rescue plan devolved to essentially waving his arms and legs about seeing if he could touch her, and as fortune would have it, his hand brushed her arm.
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Grabbing her and swimming like mad, they approached their friends.
“So I pushed her toward the shore. Her friend got her arm and then I lost touch with her… I was getting sucked back into the exact same spot and only for her to turn around, and she reached her arm and I actually grabbed her arm and we got pulled in together,” he told Global News.
Lake’s wife Bernadette says it’s exactly the sort of man he is to risk his life for a complete stranger.
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Dave Brosha is a professional photographer and snapped a photo post-rescue to honor the savior, but described that after asking the Truro police officer if he could have permission to do so, the response was something like utter disbelief—which Brosha interpreted as a man feeling he did what anyone would have done in that situation.
WATCH the story below from Global News…
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Great to read another Good News story that shares the amazing kindness inside so many people.
The photo by Dave Brosha shows heavily-aerated (yellow) water below the falls. As any swift water rescue- trained person will attest to, water below a falls can have almost as much air within it as water. Swimmers don’t float well and strokes aren’t very effective; the young woman was supremely fortunate that day.