In a daring rescue over the Fourth of July holiday weekend, a Massachusetts teen leapt from the jet ski he was riding onto a runaway boat on Lake Winnipesaukee in New Hampshire after the driver fell overboard.
The incident happened on Wednesday in Smith's Cove. According to the NBC's "TODAY" show, the boat was zooming around uncontrolled without a driver after he was knocked out of the boat unexpectedly.
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With the boat dangerously continuing to circle the busy lake with its motor running, 17-year-old Brady Procon, who was on the back of a jet ski, was somehow able to hop onto the spiraling watercraft and get it under control.
Though there were multiple children in sailboats and other vessels docked nearby, thankfully no one was injured nor any property damaged
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The whole incident was captured on video by Rich Bono, a bystander.
Bono said he was on the dock Wednesday when he heard some commotion in what is usually a quiet, no-wake zone.
“I can hear an engine revving, and I looked down the end of the dock toward the noise and saw a boat circling, circling, circling, and no one was in it,” he said. “Obviously, that’s not good.”
Bono later learned that the boat’s operator, a sailing instructor, had reached into the water to pick up a tennis ball used for teaching when one of the students’ sailboats tipped over. The sailboat's mast hit the motor boat’s throttle, sending the instructor overboard and the boat into a spiral.
“Brady was a hero,” Bono said in an interview Monday. “That boat was under power, throttled up. Motors on boats are like meat grinders, they’re not very forgiving if someone gets hit.”
But Procon, a Ludlow, Massachusetts, resident, downplayed his role in an interview with "Western Mass News."
“They were calling me a hero, and all that, but I wouldn’t say I’m a hero," he said. "I think anyone would have done that if they had that opportunity to do it.”
Procon is set to join the U.S. Navy this fall.
The Associated Press contributed to this report.
