A ship captain leapt into action to save a man who ended up in the water at the Wharf in Southwest D.C. on Friday night.
The evening had started out normal enough for those aboard the ship Lil Freddy as they watched Game 4 of the NBA finals between the Denver Nuggets and Miami Heat.
But when they heard splashing coming from the water, they turned around and saw that a man was underneath. That’s when their captain, Aaron Lloyd, jumped into action.
“I wasn’t thinking about anything, I was just like, ‘Ah man, this guy is just going to die at the back of our yacht if we don’t do something,’” Lloyd said.
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Lloyd’s heroic actions were caught on video by Ricky Fleetwood, the owner of Lil Freddy.
Fleetwood watched on from his boat as his captain jumped into the water after hearing what he thought was “a duck, until we looked back, and it was a person yelling for help.”
Lloyd didn’t hesitate to dive in.
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“As I was approaching, he definitely went under like once or twice, and it was dark and I was thinking, this is going to be scary,” he said.
With a crowd watching, the captain was able to pull the man to a ladder.
“He was very quiet and calm, but you could see he was not doing good, like he was freaking out. So we just dragged him over to the ladder,” Lloyd said.
Fleetwood said he had no doubt that everyone was going to be OK after his captain made the decision to go in.
“Once Aaron grabbed him, we knew at that time that we had him,” he said. “We just had to get him to the ladder, and other than that, we knew that he was pretty safe.”
The victim didn’t suffer any injuries, and it’s unclear how he got into the water, according to D.C. Fire and EMs.
The heroic captain had a word of caution: “Just stay away from the water, especially if you don’t know how to swim.”
