WASHINGTON – Two Maryland families are standing by at the hospital, waiting for their kids to recover after falling through the ice of a Baltimore pond.
Four kids playing behind Landsdowne High school around 1:30 p.m. Sunday walked out onto the thin ice of a nearby pond and moments later, all four fell through, Baltimore police say.
Two young men walking nearby saw the kids walk out onto Landsdowne Pond and fall through the ice.
“They performed very heroically… without hesitation went into the freezing water, pulled one of the young men to safety,” says police and fire spokeswoman Elise Armacost.
She says the men began CPR on the 12-year-old boy they pulled out of the water. Two other boys got out on their own.
“The fourth young man went under the water. He was submerged for well over an hour. He’s the one in the most serious situation,” Armacost says.
A team of 25 units of emergency responders pulled the 13-year-old boy out of the pond alive, but with very low vital signs.
“It doesn’t matter whether it’s winter or the summertime. It can be difficult to see people who have gone under the body of water because it’s dark and murky and you don’t know how deep it is also,” she says.
Children are not alone in overestimating the weight which ice can hold.
“With the weather as cold as it is right now, there is ice on our local ponds and people can be deluded into thinking it’s OK to walk out onto it and it is not,” Armacost says.
“There is never a situation here where it’s safe to walk out on the ice,” she says.
Two of the boys who got out of the pond on their own have been treated and released. The two rescued from the pond are in serious condition Monday afternoon.
