At the Bottom of the Bay
by Anita Bartholomew
The car plunged off the bridge. A little boy was trapped.
It was the kind of silky, warm November day that only happens in Florida. Pearly skies and clear vistas. The dark blue waters of Tampa Bay and the cleanly etched skyline of the city stood out as Amira Jakupovic and her family drove north across the Howard Frankland Bridge.
Now U.S. citizens, they had moved from Europe to St. Petersburg, Florida, six years earlier. Today they were on their way to lunch with relatives in Tampa.
Trim and fit, Amira could have passed for a teenager. Her husband, Mujo, an amateur soccer player, was in the front passenger’s seat of their green Ford Explorer, and their two boys, Amar, 7, and Emrah, 13, were in the back. The younger boy had fallen asleep.
Traffic was light. As they approached the end of the bridge, there was a sound like a gunshot. The back left tire had blown out. The SUV, traveling at about 55 miles per hour, skated wildly across the reinforced concrete roadway. The car slammed into the left cement guardrail and careened across all four northbound lanes—spinning and rolling over several times, crushing the roof. It finally hit the highway barrier on the right, then, in a single vault, went over the rail and plummeted into the dark bay below.
Kerry Reardon knew the waters around Tampa and St. Petersburg as well as the snook and spotted sea trout. He was an engineer and an avid fisherman. Once, while crabbing with his wife and kids, he’d even hauled in a blacktip shark (“a little four-footer,” he says, but big enough to take a kid’s hand off).
This Saturday, Reardon had planned to compete in a fishing tournament, but he and his teammates hadn’t caught enough bait and finally dropped out. That meant Reardon had the afternoon free to take his 15-year-old daughter, Kara, out for a driving lesson.
Out on the road, Reardon expected Kara to turn right, toward St. Petersburg’s spectacular Sunshine Skyway Bridge. But on a whim, the young driver turned left instead, toward Tampa across the three-mile-long Frankland Bridge. When they were almost over, the traffic began to slow, then creep along.
“Dad, there’s a backup,” Kara said.
“Get used to it,” Reardon joked.
Locals call the bridge the Frankenstein, due to its horrendous traffic snarls.
Then Reardon noticed a half-dozen or more people standing at the bridge’s barrier, staring into the water. Glittering bits of glass covered the pavement, and there were skid marks across three lanes. This was not one of Frankenstein’s usual jams, Reardon realized. Someone must have gone over the side.
Amira had blacked out. Chill salt water revived her. Frantically, she looked all about. Her long brown hair swirled in the water. In the murk, she saw a hint of blue and white—letters on the shirt her older boy, Emrah, was wearing. She reached out and grabbed the cloth. With her other hand, she searched for the door, a window, any way out. All the glass had blown away in the SUV’s tumble across the bridge. Amira pulled Emrah to her and swam out the driver’s-side window. The two struggled to the surface.
But her husband and their younger child were still below.
Kerry Reardon and officer Luis Vasquez, on a police dive boat near the “Frankenstein” bridge.
Taking a breath, Amira saw the blue prow of a fishing boat coming straight toward them. It slowed, and someone leaned over the side to take her son out of her arms.
Amira dived immediately, searching for the wreck. She found the car, but she couldn’t get in and was forced to come up for a breath of air. She dived again. This time, she couldn’t locate the SUV in the swirling, silt-laden water.
Surfacing a second time, she saw that her husband had made it out. Together they dived, hunting for their younger son—but it was as if the bay had swallowed the SUV and the child with it.
“Pull over, pull over,” Reardon said to Kara. She did as her father told her. He bolted out of the car and looked over the edge. A charter fishing boat idled by the bridge. Reardon could see that the boat captain had already pulled three people out of the water: a man, a woman and a teenage boy. Soaked and frantic, the woman was screaming and crying.
Reardon yelled down to the boat, “Is there anyone left in the car?”
The answer chilled him—a child.
He hurried to his car, dropped his keys, wallet and shoes on the passenger’s seat. Dressed in just his cutoff jeans and a T-shirt, he started back. “Lock the doors,” he told his daughter. “I’ll be back soon.”
Reardon knew that the current around bridge supports is sharp and tricky, because it runs through narrow gaps. The swift water stirs up the silty bottom, so you often find yourself with only a foot of visibility. Even with a mask and fins, most people get lost in seconds.
Scanning the water, Reardon saw a stream of bubbles rising to the surface. There! That’s where the car was. He climbed on top of the cement guardrail and dived off headfirst.
Kelli Earle liked to drive with all the windows open, letting the bay breeze play with her hair. The 25-year-old registered nurse had a baby shower to attend. She was on her way to pick up panini and other party sandwiches for the luncheon.
Suddenly, brake lights ahead of her glared red, and cars began shifting to the left lanes. Earle pulled to the right, stopped, got out of her car and walked over to the edge, where a group had gathered.
Glancing over the side, she saw a woman, a man and a kid being pulled out of the sea and into an idling boat. The woman was looking back into the water, screaming, “My son, my son.”
A minute later, Earle noticed someone in cutoff jeans diving off the concrete barrier and into the bay. After the man hit the surface, 19 feet below, a lone soccer shoe popped up and bobbed along in the water.
The moment Reardon was underwater, he felt the current sweeping through the bridge’s understructure, tugging him along. He plunged to the bay floor, where he knew the current would ease up. And if he’d estimated correctly, he’d be somewhere near the submerged vehicle.
He was almost on top of the SUV before detecting the hulking shape. He didn’t want to leave without finding the boy, but his lungs were close to bursting. He had to surface.
Fearing he’d lose track of the car’s position, he headed upstream, against the current. He hoped that when he descended again, the flow would carry him back to the car. He gulped air and quickly dived back down.
Reardon reached out to touch the car and skimmed along it, feeling for the door. He found the driver’s-side window, already broken from the crash. Crawling through, he didn’t see the boy at first. He shimmied into the backseat. Reardon was almost nose-to-nose with the child before he saw dark, unblinking eyes staring back.
The boy was still securely locked by his seat belt. Reardon groped for the buckle, touched the cold metal and snapped it open. He grabbed the front of the boy’s shirt. The little, limp frame moved almost weightlessly with him. Reardon maneuvered him through the window, then kicked for the surface. Was he bringing up a dead boy?
When Kelli Earle saw the man in cutoff jeans resurface, carrying a small body, she kicked off her flip-flops, jumped in feetfirst and swam to the fishing boat. “I’m a nurse,” she said. “Let me help.” One of the men on the boat pulled her aboard.
She went to little Amar, tilted his head back to clear his airway, gave him two rescue breaths and then checked his pulse. His heart had stopped beating. His pupils were dilated. His skin was deathly pale, his lips blue.
The bay water was cool, but probably not cold enough to help preserve brain function as icy water sometimes does. The boy needed air—and fast. Earle began CPR. With each compression, fluid from the child’s lungs and stomach spewed out onto her. The rocking boat didn’t make the procedure any easier. And the boy’s terrified mother grasped Earle, clawing at her. “Help him. Please, help him.”
Earle ignored her and tried to stay focused. “Get us to land,” she called to the boat captain.
A police officer met the boat and joined Earle in doing CPR. He compressed the boy’s chest, while Earle blew air into his mouth. They kept up the rhythm, minute after minute—on a completely unresponsive body. Finally an ambulance arrived.
EMTs laid Amar on a stretcher and hooked him up to their equipment. They covered the child’s nose and mouth with an oxygen mask that could be hand-pumped.
As the EMTs wheeled Amar into the ambulance, Earle checked his vital signs and turned to the distraught parents. “Do you pray?” she asked. The mother nodded.
“Now’s the time,” the nurse said.
Officer Luis Vasquez, the second policeman on the scene, accompanied Amar in the ambulance. A diver with the Tampa Police Department, Vasquez had pulled a number of children from the waters during his 17 years as a cop. None had survived.
It didn’t look like this kid was going to either. Vasquez couldn’t feel a pulse. It hurt like hell for the father of two to think he might lose another one. He kept up the compressions—he pressed, the EMT pumped air. Again and again. No response. Then he felt a faint movement against his hands. Was it the EMT pumping the oxygen out of sequence? He looked up and saw that wasn’t so. “Did he just take a breath?” asked Vasquez.
“I don’t think so,” the EMT said.
But then, stunning them both, the child sucked in air a second time.
“He’s breathing on his own,” yelled the EMT. “Did you feel a heartbeat?”
“No,” answered Vasquez, his hands still on Amar’s chest. Then he did, the punch of the heart against his palm.
Vasquez knew Amar wasn’t in the clear yet. He’d been underwater for five minutes, his heart had stopped, oxygen had stopped circulating through his body. If he survived, he would likely be brain-damaged.
At the hospital, doctors kept Amar on a ventilator and in an induced coma for ten days. Reardon, Earle and Vasquez came regularly to the intensive care unit to see the child and get progress reports. Would he live? And if he lived, would the little person who thought and played and had feelings survive? No one could say.
Amira stayed by her child night and day, rarely leaving his side. Doctors gradually lowered the oxygen to allow Amar to breathe on his own. Finally, on the tenth day, they decided to remove his breathing tube and rouse him from his coma. Hopefully, his youth would pull him through.
A raspy voice is the only residual effect Amar (No. 59 above, with family) has from his underwater ordeal.
It did. Two days later, he was sitting up in bed, playing Super Mario on a Game Boy, absorbed in digital adventures, oblivious of his own underwater odyssey.
A slightly raspy voice is the only residual effect Amar has. His father needed surgery on his leg, which he injured in the crash. He is recovering. Amira is fine, but Emrah suffers from lingering leg and back pain.
The Jakupovics are amazed and profoundly grateful that the right people, in the right order—diver, nurse, boat captain, police and EMTs—each one with the right skills, showed up in time to save their son.
Originally published in the January 2007 issue of Reader’s Digest magazine.
The Jakupovic family still lives in St. Petersburg, Florida. Amar played football in high school. His older brother, Emrah, also made a complete recovery. He has a young daughter. The family stays in touch with rescuer Kerry Reardon.