SOUTH HERO, Vt. (AP) – A teacher at a Duxbury school is hospitalized after she fell out of a boat and was hit by a propeller over the weekend.
Jennifer Miller told rescuers the incident happened after she fell out of a boat into the waters of Lake Champlain Sunday.
Her friend, whose name has not been released, jumped into the water to save her, and their boat drifted away.
Miller’s friend had lost his glasses and couldn’t find the boat without them. He then began swimming for what he thought was the nearest shore.
Johnny Krezinski of Middlesex was driving his 30-foot pontoon boat on the lake when one of his passengers found Miller, and then found her friend, who was swimming away.
“He had made it some 300 yards from her,” Krezinski said. “I know 300 yards doesn’t sound like much on the ground, but through those swells it was unbelievable how far he had gotten.”
Miller, a teacher at Crossett Brook Middle School in Duxbury who was hospitalized Monday at Fletcher Allen Health Care Monday, declined to comment. The condition of her friend was unknown Monday.
Krezinski said there were few boats in the water on the day of the rescue.
“”…If we wouldn’t have been there, they would have both drowned,” he said.
Krezinski called 911 on his cell phone while Elizabeth Danyew, and her friend Christie Cahalan, tended to the Miller and the young man. Elizabeth Danyew, a kindergarten teacher at Websterville Baptist Christian School, had first aid training and Cahalan had trained as a nurse earlier in her life.
“Everybody had a role and it happened so perfectly,” said Elizabeth Danyew. “Afterward, we just knew God had used us as part of a miracle.”
AP-ES-08-25-03 1835EDT
Send questions/comments to the editors.
