Members of a Cape Coral community are calling a local police officer a hero after jumping into a canal to rescue a woman.
According to police, Officer Kwesi Johnson responded to a residential neighborhood around 3 a.m. Tuesday to find a vehicle sinking in the water with a woman inside.
Johnson faced a tough decision, as time was of the essence. He needed to figure out where the calls of distress were coming from.
“When I got there, I could hear screams, like, I got to the end of the road, and I remember thinking, ‘Do I go left or right?'” said Johnson. “I just chose right, and I saw the ruffles in the water. I was like, ‘OK, there’s a car in there,’ and I looked down, and there’s fog in the car, and her screams were just– it was horrifying, just her screaming.”
Without thinking, the officer dove in.
“There’s a lot of splashing inside the car,” said Johnson. “That, along with the screaming, just seemed like a timely manner, so there wasn’t much thinking there. I was just like, ‘I got to get in there and get her out.'”
When he got to her, he said the water inside the car was already up to her shoulders.
“Try the back window, try the back window,” he advised as the woman in the car screamed.
Johnson broke a window open and pulled her out of the car.
“Is there anyone else in the car?” asked Johnson. The woman replied, “No, there’s no one else in the car but me.”
Video of the rescue quickly went viral on social media with plenty of people hailing officer Johnson a hero.
“I remember waking up and seeing, like, Facebook. It was really huge. I was like, ‘Woah.’ I just showed up to work and did this. It was really rewarding, yeah,” he said.
Days after his heroic act he said it is still hard to believe what happened.
“When I watch it, I’m like, it’s like, ‘I did that?’ It’s like a question mark,” said Johnson. “At the moment, there isn’t much thinking, to be honest. I was just like, ‘I got to get her,’ and then watching that back and seeing all the posts and stuff, it’s really surreal.”
Johnson’s faith remained with him throughout the rescue.
“I would say, yeah, God was on my side that day,” he said.
Johnson suffered minor injuries and is already back on the field.
The woman he rescued is also OK.
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