IL Firefighters Brave Icy Waters to Save Boy from Pond

A boy around 12 years old was rescued by firefighters after plunging through thin ice on a retention pond Wednesday morning in Fox Lake.

“This is a good story, finally,” said Fox Lake Fire Protection District Deputy Chief Ed Lescher.

Rescue crews were called to the 200 block of South Illinois Route 59 around 10:40 a.m. They saw the boy gripping the sides of an ice shelf about 50 feet out. “We yelled to him,” Lescher said, and the boy yelled back.

A diver jumped in, swam out and grabbed the boy, who was conscious and alert. “The early stages of hypothermia were setting in,” Lescher said.

The boy was placed into an ambulance and given blankets and dry clothes. He didn’t need to be taken to a hospital, and his mother got there and the two went home.

The pond is surrounded by an apartment complex and is about 25 feet deep at points, Lescher said.

He reminded the public not to walk out onto ice this early in the winter. “Stay off the ice.”

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