Inmates save three boys from a fast-moving river in Washington yesterday, says a report at Fox News.
Sources say the inmates, from Larch Corrections Center, were finishing their work for the day near the river when they heard the children screaming.
"We just thought it was some kids screaming until we seen their two heads bobbing in the water with the canoe upside down," says Nelson Pettis, a member of the crew. "They were coming down over flooded Salmon Creek. It was raging pretty fast."
The three boys, brothers, had lost control of their canoe, which had flipped over, and were bobbing in the river screaming for help when Pettis says he and another inmate Larry Bohn jumped into the river.
"I just let the current take me down until I could get to a spot where my feet hit ground and I tried to stay put. They actually came to me right there," Pettis adds, "Right then, the current swept me from underneath my feet and I grabbed onto the kids and got them to a little island in the middle of the river."
Bohn helped the older boy, 16, to shore, then helped Pettis get the two younger boys, ages 8 and 10, to a pile of debris floating in the river. Another inmate, John Fowler, helped rescue crews carry the boys to shore.
"They were really scared," says Bohn. "They kept telling us 'thank you, thank you' all over again."
The three boys, and two inmates were taken to nearby hospitals with mild hypothermia.
"I think we did something that any good person would do. You see three helpless kids in a river, you help. That's what you do," says Fowler. "Just cause we're incarcerated, doesn't mean we're bad people, " he added. "We made some bad choices in our lives, but we're still, we're just like everybody else. We're just paying our debt for what we did wrong."
The inmates who saved the boys are serving sentences for non-violent crimes.
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