A 66-year-old man was saved by some quick thinking fishermen after he fell into Jamaica Bay in Brooklyn yesterday. The man, whose name hasn't been released, was preparing to fish and sitting on a rail at Brooklyn’s Canarsie pier at around 12:45 p.m. when he fell in. That's when the two fishermen, whom the Post identify as Frankie and Ray, were able to cast a line and snag the flailing man by his sweater and keep his head above water until officials arrived. "He was 230 pounds and the current would have taken him out," witness Joseph Bologna told the Post. "The guy was bobbing up and down. They were trying to save him."
"Frankie and Ray grabbed him with a gaff—a treble hook,’’ Bologna added. "They couldn’t pull him out of the water, but they kept him from going under. If they didn’t use the hooks, he would have drowned." Firefighters were able to get the man onto an NYPD boat and started first aid. "He had a very weak pulse," Detective Mark Sondero, part of the NYPD harbor unit rescue team, told the News. "He was not breathing and turning blue."
Fellow fisherman John Lopez said someone aboard the rescue boat initially made a sign that he had died: "But then a guy [another rescuer] jumped from his boat to the other boat and used a defibrillator. The guy [saved from drowning] gave out a big yell and everybody cheered. It was a miracle that they saved his life."
The man was taken to Brookdale Hospital where he is listed in critical condition.
