Chris Sayles was rounding the corner on his drive from Penticton to Kelowna when he saw a minivan quickly sinking into Okanagan Lake.
“I saw the driver open the door, obviously in a panic, trying to get out. I was able to stop my car on the side of the road along with some other Samaritans,” Sayles said.
Around 9:30 a.m. on Saturday morning, the driver lost control of her minivan in wintry weather conditions just south of Kikininee Provincial Park.
Sayles said he jumped into frigid water up to his waist. Others ran to help, and they formed a human chain to the shore, he said.
“It was starting to get deep on me, so I reached my arm out and said hang onto me, so I don’t go any further,” Sayles said. “The van hadn’t settled yet, so it was still going down at this point.”
Before the accident, Sayles was talking with his mom on a hands-free device in the car.
But the phone didn’t hang up when he bolted from his car, and Rosemary Sayles became worried as she heard part of the rescue from afar.
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“It was like ‘oh, oh, oh,’ over and over, and of course I was really concerned. Then I heard a woman’s voice, and she said something like ‘get the door,’ and then I heard my son’s voice, and it was something like ‘get that’ — and that was it,” she said, adding that the line went dead.
Chris Sayles said time was closing in.
Sayles and others who came to the rescue were able to haul the driver and passenger to safety.
“If there had been passengers in the other two rows, it would have been a whole different scenario,” he said.
“Just definitely the looks in both of their eyes: he was quiet, but the female driver was in hysterics.”
According to Penticton Fire Department, both people in the vehicle were taken to hospital by ambulance. Their condition is unknown.
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