A naked teenager’s cries for help on Parlin Pond Sunday afternoon are being credited with helping rescuers save the lives of her father and sister, whose boat capsized.
In a news release issued late Sunday night, Maine Department of Inland Fisheries and Wildlife spokesman Mark Latti said 14-year-old Kiana French of Skowhegan swam to shore, took her clothes off, and started screaming for someone to help her father and sister.
Kiana told rescuers that she took her clothing off because she remembered seeing someone doing it on a reality TV show. Emily MacCabe, the first person to hear the girl’s screams, said the only reason she saw the girl was that her fair skin contrasted against the dark trees as she moved.
Emily MacCabe was outside working near her family’s cabin at Parlin Pond camps when she heard screams coming from the densely forested shoreline around 1:30 p.m. After scanning the shoreline and listening for more sounds, MacCabe and her husband, Game Warden Kris MacCabe, thought they could see a naked person walking along the shoreline and screaming for help.
The warden got his neighbor, Don West, and they took West’s boat across the pond. The girl told the men that their fishing boat capsized and that her sister and father were still out in the middle of the lake. MacCabe placed the girl in the boat of Ray Levesque, another person from Parlin Pond camps, and then went to the middle of the pond about 1,800 feet from where they found the girl.
MacCabe and West rescued her father, Gary French, 40, of Norridgework, and his daughter Cierrah French, 14, of Skowhegan, who were in the water with their lifejackets on.
Latti said that French and his two daughters were fishing on Parlin Pond when the weather worsened and the wind intensified. Waves began crashing over their boat, and it started taking on water. Despite their efforts to bail the boat, it capsized. They put on lifejackets and tried to swim to shore, but only Kiana was able to do so.
The family was examined by emergency responders, but did not need to be hospitalized.
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