Georgia sorority sisters hailed as heroes after saving mom and her kids when car flew off bridge and crashed in creek
Five University of Georgia sorority sisters heroically saved a mother and her two young sons after their car flew off a bridge and into a creek, rushing into the cold water to rescue the boys.
Freshmen students Molly McCollum, Jane McArdle, Eleanor Cart, Clarke Jones and Kaitlyn Iannace were leaving campus to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day in Savannah on March 15 when they saw Cori Craft’s SUV lose control and drop into the creek.
“In our peripheral vision, we just see this … spark of white, a little cloud of dust and kind of like a big old crash,” McCollum told “Good Morning America” on Wednesday. “And I’m like, ‘Am I imagining that?’ And Clarke was like, ‘Yeah, yeah, let’s go check that out.'”
Craft had been driving through Sardis, Georgia, with her two sons in the backseat when she lost control at the wheel — her car rapidly sinking into the creek.
The girls, who had taken a detour after stopping for lunch, rushed over and began calling out to Craft to see if she was okay.
“I was thinking, I’m like, ‘I don’t even know where my phone is. I don’t have my glasses. I don’t know how I’m going to call for help,'” Craft said. “And then I just heard them over on the bank, and they shouted [asking] if I was OK. And I’m like, ‘No, my kids are in the car.'”
Seeing the frantic mom the girls sprung into action, immediately calling 911 and rushing into the water to pull her sons out of the sinking vehicle.
They managed to pull Craft’s older son out quickly, but her 4-year-old son was trapped, buckled into his car seat underwater for between four and five minutes.
“Time was ticking. It had been four to five minutes and we all together just pulled him out of the vehicle. He was fully unconscious, it was terrifying,” McCollum recalled.
Iannace described the younger boy’s lips as “completely blue” and said he was not breathing.
911 audio shared with GMA revealed Cart had still been on the phone with dispatchers when the CPR Jones had been performing on the child got him breathing again.
“I was a lifeguard in high school for one summer, so I just remembered it from then,” Jones said. “We had no clue if he was going to survive at all. And so I’m like, ‘This is the one thing I know how to do that I can help. And so I’m just going to give it my best try.'”
All six of the women broke down in tears once the young boy began breathing again.
“Without them stopping I would not have my youngest here because I know I would not have been able to get to him in time,” Craft said.
The five students were recognized by the Sardis Police Department and the Burke County Sheriff’s Department and surprised with badges of honor to recognize their heroism.
Craft and her sons were taken to the hospital after the accident — the only injury was a seatbelt burn suffered by her youngest son.
The sorority sisters chalked it up to being in the “right place at the right time.”
“Every second mattered in that situation,” Jones said. “I mean if we were five seconds later we wouldn’t have even seen the car go off the bridge and it was so forested we wouldn’t have even thought to look down there.”
McCollum added: “It’s also … just made me rethink, like, day to day, it’s more about just like [having] a mindset of altruism and just like searching for [anyone] who needs help in the world around you.”
