This is what a group of heroes look like. Jumped in and saved someone from drowning in their car. God bless. pic.twitter.com/K7AqG64KtQ
— ISU WOPA (@ISUWOPA) March 17, 2016
It was a spring break they’ll never forget! On March 16, a group of Iowa State football players vacationing in South Padre Island, Texas, saw a woman drowning in a sinking car and ran to the rescue.
Senior linebacker Anthony Lazard recounted the team’s heroic efforts to The Des Moines Register. He said his teammate Josh Jahlas was out on the balcony of his hotel room when he saw a car drive straight into the Laguna Madre Bay and alerted his friends. Lazard, along with fellow Iowa State players Jack Spreen and Joe Doran, sprinted out of the hotel, jumped in the canal and started swimming toward the car. There was a woman trapped inside — later identified as 22-year-old Luisa Maria Castro — so the three athletes began to punch at the glass.
“I was getting worried that we were going to watch this girl drown to death, because no matter how hard we were hitting it, it wasn’t cracking or spidering for a while,” Lazard told the newspaper.
Castro eventually broke a small hole in the front windshield, and the three men worked to break the glass even further, pull her from the car and help her to shore, where three more Iowa State players were waiting to help.
Even with the team’s valiant efforts, help wouldn’t have arrived in time. “That car completely sank in less than a minute, and if not for them jumping into the water and pulling the driver out, she would most certainly have drowned,” officer Michael Schiltz said in a statement to the Register.
