Man who can’t swim saves a girl from drowning using a drone: “she wouldn’t have made it”

Sometimes, a hero can appear out of nowhere, and that’s certainly what happened to a teenage girl who got caught in a riptide off the coast of Pensacola, Florida.

Shark fisherman Andrew Smith had brought his drone to work as he uses it to set bait for the sharks; what he didn’t realise was that this time it would be used to save someone’s life.

‘The drone can swim but I can’t’

After staying back after work, he was approached by someone asking if he could swim, and that a young girl’s life was in danger after being caught by the riptide.

“I was sitting there and this girl came running asking if anybody could swim, I said no, I absolutely could not swim, and she was running and screaming, and nobody could swim,” Smith explained. “Her friend was getting sucked more and more out, and I looked down at the drone and was like, ‘The drone can swim but I can’t.’”

Thinking quickly, he took his drone and tried to drop a life-ring close to the victim. “I ran up and grabbed one of those [life-rings] and ran back down to the drone,” he added. “I flew it out, and it was a terrible miss. I released it too early, it was really windy.”

While the first attempt failed due to the nasty weather conditions, the second try was a complete masterclass from the drone pilot, who landed the life-ring right within the girl’s reach.

“I flew it back out, and after the first one, I could tell how windy it was. Then I lowered it down, I had to go slower and slower down to her because that was it. That was the last opportunity we were going to have. I lowered it until you could see her hands grab it, and then I lowered it a little more and I released it,” Smith said. “She climbed on and started floating.”

“I was shaking pretty badly. It was nerve-wracking, I almost cried,” he admitted to CBS, “If it wasn’t for that second drop, she wouldn’t have made it. The EMS, the cops, and the lifeguards said she wouldn’t have made it.”

The girl was checked out by a medical team and promptly sent home with no health issues to report.

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