Teenager recalls harrowing ordeal after he rescues 83-year-old man and his dog from icy Iowa lake

A high school student literally jumped into action and saved the life of an elderly man and his dog who were trapped in a car that had fallen into an icy lake. 

Joseph Salmon, 17, was ice-fishing with his mom on East Okoboji Lake in Iowa when he saw a Jeep, driven by 83-year-old Thomas Lee, fall through the ice and into the water. Lee was reportedly on his way to his son-in-law’s fishing shack when the accident took place. 

Salmon said as soon as he saw the car fall through, he immediately ran over to help. 

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“As I was running, I called 911 [and] ran over there. And for a second, we just… I was standing on the shoreline, and another guy came down, and we were like waving at him like trying to tell him, get out, get out of the Jeep,” he explained Monday on “Tucker Carlson Tonight.” “And he was kind of in shock, didn’t really know what to do. He just kind of sitting there.”

“As we were waving, more people came down and one of the guys said, ‘There’s a child in the Jeep.’ And as soon as someone said there was a child, I got everything I needed off my first layer and I jumped into the water, got to the Jeep, tried opening the back door, which it was locked. It would not open, and I broke the back window.”

The high school athlete added that he used a knife to break the back window and tried getting Lee out, but the man’s foot was caught between the center console and the seat. 

Lee was heading to his son-in-law’s fishing shack when his car fell through the ice.

“So I went all the way into the Jeep, into the front of it, pulled his leg out, pushed on the bottom of it to push him up. And I crawled back out, to have more room for him to come. And as he was coming between the seat and the roof of the Jeep… It’s a very- it’s not a very big gap. And he couldn’t get through that,” Salmon told host Tucker Carlson. 

“So I went back in the Jeep. I pushed him back towards the front and pushed him up. So on a jeep back seat, there’s like a lever on top of it. I pulled the seat down. So I pushed them back. I flipped the seat down and grabbed by under his shoulders and started pulling them out.”

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Corey McConnell, 30; Kody Harrelson, 26; Cody Chester, 27; and Chris Parks, 27; also helped pull the man and dog to safety, according to the Dickinson County Sheriff’s Office. (There was no child.)

Lee was taken to Lakes Regional Healthcare. 

Lee was transported to Lakes Regional Healthcare, but neither he nor his dog, Cooper, were injured, The Des Moines Register reported. 

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Salmon was treated for minor cuts from the broken glass.