Jan. 04--Bailey Wood missed her movie but got to see her father in action Friday when the fireman rescued a 12-year-old boy who had fallen through ice on a pond in Lexington.
Battalion Chief Brian Wood was off duty and on the way to a movie with his 8-year-old daughter when he heard a report about the boy on a fire department radio in his vehicle.
Wood, a 21-year veteran of the Lexington department, found the boy in a large pond behind a house on Sherborne Place in the Andover Forest subdivision. Temperatures Friday were barely in the double digits.
The boy, who wasn't identified, stopped reaching for a rope Wood tried to use to pull the boy out. Wood said the boy stopped responding to questions, so Wood jumped into the pond.
The boy had been in the pond for about 10 minutes, and the water was up to his neck, Wood said. It appeared that the boy's legs or feet got stuck in 3 feet of mud at the bottom of the pond.
Wood said the boy was beginning to suffer from hypothermia and was rushed into the house to warm up before he was taken to a local hospital. The boy was expected to be OK.
Jennifer Rowell, a neighbor who called 911, said she saw the boy play on the ice and fall in.
"He told me he was stuck," she said. "At that point I went home and ran and got his mom." A woman could be seen getting into the ambulance with the boy.
Wood dismissed talk of being a hero.
"We're just firemen," he told reporters. "Right place, right time, and a lot of good luck. Everything worked out with a good outcome."
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