Woman Rescued After Vehicle Goes Into Water In Southwest Philadelphia
By Todd Quinones
PHILADELPHIA (CBS) -- A woman was rescued after a vehicle plunged into Cobbs Creek in Southwest Philadelphia.
A Good Samaritan, who was on lunch break, saw the commotion.
He has no medical or rescue training whatsoever, but still decided to act by mimicking what he saw on TV.
The SUV was flipped over, submerged in water and the driver trapped inside when Marcell Port was handed a rock and a box cutter to go along with his courage.
"She had stopped breathing. We broke the window trying to get her out, but her seatbelt was on, so we cut her seatbelt and got her out the car," Port said.
Port, who has never been taught CPR started to give the woman mouth to mouth based, as he says, on what he saw on television.
"We didn't know what we were doing. We tried our best. We gave up, and as we started to walk away she started breathing," he said.
"I just did the best I could. I started to think I failed and then she started breathing," Port added.
Philadelphia Police believe the woman driver may have suffered some kind of medical emergency as she was driving north on Cobbs Creek Parkway near Greenway Avenue.
Stunned eyewitnesses say what Port and another Good Samaritan did was nothing short of heroic.
"It wasn't like she was making a full turn, the car just veered off," eyewitness Pamela Rivers said.
The SUV flipped down an embankment and landed in Cobbs Creek at around 3:30 p.m. Tuesday.
12th District Philadelphia Police Officers Sherron Logan and Byron Dawson arrived shortly after the accident.
"Once we got her up she was breathing. When she was in the water she looked totally out of it," Officer Dawson said.
Indications are the driver is going to pull through.
She was last listed in guarded condition at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania.
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