Surveillance video captures men rushing to help riders after ATV plunges in canal
MIAMI - Surveillance cameras recorded two men scrambling to save a woman sinking underwater in a canal in the Hammocks Thursday afternoon. One day later, the father and son wished they could do more.
"Emotionally, it sunk in once we started looking at the videos," Dennis Padilla, who along with his son Mikhael, 24, helped rescue a woman.
While sitting inside their kitchen, Padilla and Mikhael heard a sound unlike anything they had ever heard before coming from the canal behind their home.
"A woman screaming: I can't swim," Dennis Padilla said. "I can't swim."
Both men ran to help. Mikhael Padilla grabbed a ladder to climb out the canal. It's a tool the men used in the past to pull pets out the same water.
Dennis Padilla grabbed a life jacket and searched for the woman.
Two women riding an ATV along Black Creek Trail Thursday afternoon when both fell into the canal with the vehicle, according to Miami-Dade Police.
Surveillance video showed a firefighter jumping into the water first. Then, Mikhael Padilla took his clothes off and went into the canal.
Moments later, the woman screaming climbed out using the ladder. Mikhael and the firefighter followed. In the process, they learned the woman was not alone.
"She kept mentioning that she lost her cousin that she couldn't hold on to her," Dennis Padilla said. "So, immediately we're like there's a second body. Where is she?"
Both Padillas ran along the short but only saw a helmet floating in the water. Rescue crews did not find anyone near the surface.
Half an hour later, the search ended. Divers found the second woman's body a few feet away from where Padilla saw the helmet, Padilla said. That woman later died at a hospital, according to Miami-Dade Police.
"If it happens again, my son and I, we just we'd do it over," Padilla said. "We won't hesitate."
