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Teen used his backpack to help woman from icy pond

THE ASSOCIATED PRESS

LOUISVILLE – An assembly at Louisville Middle School Friday was scheduled to honor 14-year-old Jared Vigil who helped rescue a woman who was up to her neck in an icy pond.The woman, Connie Ostwald, 48, waded into 5-foot deep water at Cottonwood Park Wednesday to rescue her Labrador, Willow, who fell in while chasing some ducks. Willow managed to get to shore, but Ostwald remained trapped.”I was just, like, walking home, and I could hear her screaming but I couldn’t see her at first,” Vigil, an eighth-grader said Thursday.When Vigil finally saw them, he called 911 on his cell phone and walked toward the pond. Ostwald warned him that if he came closer he might fall in, too. Vigil took of his backpack, loosened the straps and used it as a lifeline.”I made it loose and saggy so she would have more reach,” he said.Ostwald credited Vigil with saving her life.”I wouldn’t have drowned, but if I had been in that water much longer, I definitely would have died of hypothermia,” she said.


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