Illinois teen survives after getting sucked into culvert
MARISSA, Ill. – An Illinois teen survived after getting sucked into a culvert during heavy flooding while he was playing with his friends.
Sebastian Calderon, 13, was in what he thought was steady water when he was sucked into the stormwater system, WGN reported.
“It was raining and we were just out here playing, and I was going to grab a ball and then just went underneath,” Calderon told WGN.
Friend Xavier Trammeal ran to tell Calderon’s mother.
“I was scared because I didn’t know what happened, and I didn’t know if he was going to be alive or not,” Trammeal said.
Neighbor Christy Stoddard and her husband were sitting on their deck watching as the scene unfolded.
“So, we see the boys come through and (my husband) says something about, ‘those kids are going to fall in that creek,’ and it was no sooner than that came out of his mouth when Sebastian went down, and it was just chaos,” Stoddard said.
Stoddard and her husband went to help. She ended up falling in too, but her husband pulled her to safety before she was sucked into the culvert.
Calderon said it was completely dark as he floated through to the exit.
“When I first went in I started to pray … I kept using my hand to see if it was out of water so I could come up and get some breath,” he said. “Then I just kept going and at the end I started seeing drains. I kept trying to grab onto them but I couldn’t. So, then I saw the end so I just let it take me to the end.”
A firefighter was at the end waiting for him.
Calderon suffered some bumps and bruises, but was otherwise OK.
