Incredible moment suburban cops save boy, 9, from drowning in icy pond

Incredible moment suburban Chicago cops save boy, 9, from drowning in icy pond he fell through while trying to retrieve his football

Two hero police officers jumped into a pond to save a 9-year-old boy who fell through the ice on a frozen pond while retrieving a football
The dramatic rescue was captured on an officer’s bodycam
The boy and the two officers were all treated at a local hospital but subsequently released in stable condition
The boy’s mother said: ‘I thought my son was not going to be able to be here to see Thanksgiving. I want to thank all the people who rescued him’
One of the rescuing officers said that his adrenaline was so high, he didn’t notice the cold
In addition to the rescue, on Thanksgiving the Aurora Police Department gave the boy a new football

Incredible bodycam footage showed the moment two police officers in suburban Chicago rescued a 9-year-old boy from an icy pond after the child fell through the ice while trying retrieve a football.

The incident occurred around 4:30 pm on Wednesday in the Chicago-suburb of Aurora. Local police and the fire department were called to the scene to rescue the boy and a woman who had entered the water in an attempt to save him.

Multiple officers deployed water rescue kits, that are used to pull people to shore, on the banks of the pond as two officers went into the water. It took a combined effort to pull the pair to safety.

The child suffered minor injuries and was rushed to a local hospital when he was safely retrieved from the water. The two officers were also treated for minor injuries while the woman who entered the water was treated at the scene.

All three were released from the hospital in stable condition.

In an interview with the boy’s mother that was posted on the Aurora Police Department’s Facebook page, she says that she didn’t think her son was going to be with her for Thanksgiving when she saw him struggling in the water.

She said: ‘I thought my son was not going to be able to be here to see Thanksgiving. I want to thank all the people who rescued him.’

The incident occurred around 4:30 pm on Wednesday in the Chicago-suburb of Aurora

Local police and the fire department were called to the scene to rescue the boy and a woman who had entered the water in an attempt to save him

One of the officers who entered the water, Aurora police officer Andrew Soderlund told the Daily Herald: ‘I knew that they weren’t making any progress making it back. … They definitely needed some help.’

Soderlund said that the pair were 15 to 20 feet away from the shore.

In a separate interview with CBS Chicago, Soderlund said: ‘We’re driving there. You’re kind of playing that scenario through your head, what exactly are we going to see when we get there?’

He added: ‘They were pretty far out there – and obviously, they weren’t making any way of getting closer to the shore.’

In a separate interview with CBS Chicago, Soderlund said: ‘We’re driving there. You’re kind of playing that scenario through your head, what exactly are we going to see when we get there?’

Soderlund conceded in the interview that he’s no ‘Olympic swimmer’ saying: ‘I know that I’m not, you know, an Olympic swimmer. So I knew that, hey I’m not going to be able to swim with two other people that were in the water. I’m not going to be able to swim with them back.

He went on: ‘But if I can get to them, grab them, the other officers — they would be able to pull the rope that I had tied to my belt and that we would all be able to get out of the water at that point.’

Soderlund also said: ‘That adrenaline dump that goes on in a situation like that – I don’t remember the cold at all.’

He continued: ‘I originally started walking out, I was like, ‘Wow, this isn’t bad – I can stand up,’ and then it just dropped. It felt like it was no bottom.’

Soderlund described removing his bulletproof vest before he got into water so that it wouldn’t weigh him down.

In addition to the rescue, the police department gave the boy a new football on Thursday. Soderlund told CBS Chicago: ‘I don’t consider myself necessarily a hero.’

Soderlund, who joined the force in 2017, has also trained as a paramedic.

He has previous experience cold waters. In 2019, Soderlund along with his colleagues raised $11,000 for the Special Olympics by participating in a polar plunge, jumping into frigid waters in the dead of winter.

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