Mom, kids rescued after near-drowning in pond
VIDEO - A Minnesota mother and her two children are alive and well today after the vehicle they were in crashed into a pond...
Don Machacek didn’t consider himself a hero when he started his shift but reality soon set in that he would become one.
While Stella Obadiya of Hugo was taking her two children to Valley Fair she accidentally pulled onto the shoulder of the interstate to exit. When she tried to go back into traffic, she couldn’t get the car to slow down. She hoped the fence would stop her, but it didn’t. The car sped down the embankment into the pond.
“They were urging me, ‘mom, let’s get out of here, let’s get out of here.’ so I was like, ‘they will come, they will come.’”
Stella, a registered nurse, called 9-1-1 and began praying with the children.
Shortly after making the call, Don Machacek arrived on the scene.
“I jumped out of my truck and there they were. Jumped over two fences, got down to the edge of the water and I seen three sets of eyes looking out of the back window of the vehicle.”
Don got the door open and moved them to away as more water poured into the sinking sedan, and yet after all this, he remained matter-of-fact about it.
“Instincts just took over. And, okay, they’re still in the car. I got to go in. Nobody else is here so I got to do it, so, I did.”
Don works for Mn-dot’s freeway incident response safety team, commonly known as the Highway Helpers. But on this day, he became Angel Don.
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