Five High-School Freshmen Rescue Terrified Children From Icy Pond

An eight-year-old and a four-year-old were sledding down a hill and accidentally slipped into an icy pond in Middletown, New Jersey.

Before their parents could react, five teenagers from a local high-school leaped into action to save the day.

They slid backward into the pond

Olivia Heid, 8, and her younger brother R.J, 4, were sledding down the hill while their dad was yelling at them to jump off into the snow. To make matters worse, they were heading into the water backward.

"They just went so fast right down the hill," said high-school freshman Kieran Foley, 14, to CNN. "They really didn't see it coming."

As the children plunged into the water, a group of high-schoolers who just so happened to be part of the same Boy Scout group stopped sledding and ran over.

Foley jumped into the water first. Then, his friends Tyler Armagan, Ryan Day, Joseph Dietrich, and Drew Scalice, quickly formed a human chain to pull the younger kids out.

"I knew it wasn't that deep, the water, so I just picked them up and brought them to the side of the pond to get them as warm as possible."

Kieran Foley

They acted like heroes

The teenagers did everything right and saved the children from the pond -- but their work wasn't finished.

After the children were safely on land, the teens split up and tried to calm the kids down.

"All I can remember is seeing the kids come down," Scalice said.

"When we went to the car they started to cry ... but Ryan was trying to calm the kids down, asking them what they wanted for Christmas, all that type of stuff."

The parents of the rescued children, Richard Heid and Stephanie Irlbeck, thanked the teenagers for "their courage and bravery" and the rescued kids said, "thank you."

"I'm grateful that it's a good, positive impact on everyone's life and the kids were safe and no one got hurt," Foley said.

Good news going into 2021

It's truly amazing what humans, even young ones, are capable of. No one told these teenagers what to do at the moment.

They acted of their own accord, heroically saving two young children with the skills they learned as Boy Scouts. What a wonderfully uplifting story to take with us into 2021.

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