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A man in Tennessee is being hailed as a hero after he rescued a woman who's car had crashed into a freezing lake.
Tennessee experienced yet another winter storm over the weekend, bringing snow and freezing temperatures to much of the state, including Roane County. It had just started to snow around 3:30 p.m. on Sunday (January 16) as Brody Roberts was driving to meet a friend at the gym, but his plans quickly changed when he came across a truck stopped in the road, WATE reports.
As he stopped to see what was going on, he noticed a car that had managed to run off the road and into a lake.
"I was about five minutes away at that point and I saw a truck in the middle of the road, and I was like, 'What's going on up here?'" he recalled. "Then I looked over into the lake, and there was a car out there."
One person at the scene had already dialed 911 but told Roberts that someone was still inside the car in the lake. He immediately went to work and jumped into the lake, swimming up to car just as it went underwater. Fortunately, he was able to get the door open and reach the woman inside.
"I opened the door, and as soon as I opened the door, her hands came out," he recalled of the moment he was able to make contact with the woman.
Roberts got the woman out of her seatbelt and swam them both the safety, the news outlet reports. The woman sustained non-life threatening injuries and was transported to a hospital for treatment. It is unclear how the car ran off the road, but the crash remains under investigation.
Even though he called the moment he stepped out of the water with the woman as "the coldest [he's] ever been," he would do it again.
"I was only doing what I would hope somebody would do for me or my family," he said. "You know I wasn't trying to be a hero or anything like that. I just knew that somebody needed help."