It was dark and late at night when Brian and Tammy Bossard’s boat overturned in Florida’s Indian River, leaving the couple and their 7-month-old daughter scrambling to climb on top of it.
Their other daughter, Kennedy, a blonde-haired baby not yet 2, was nowhere to be seen – but could be heard screaming inside a small pocket of air beneath the boat.
“We couldn’t tell if she was in the boat or if she was trapped under the boat or if she was out in the river because we heard cries, but it just sounded like it was coming from everywhere,” Brian Bossard told ABC News’s “Good Morning America.”
Tammy Bossard made a frantic 911 call, pleading with police for help.
“I’m in the river,” she told the dispatcher, according to ABC News. “My boat crashed, and I have a baby stranded in the water. Please God, send someone now.”
“She’s got a baby in the water,” the dispatcher repeated during the call.
“Yes, please hurry!”
The family had been heading home from dinner Friday night, traveling along the state’s east coast. Tammy Bossard, holding her youngest daughter, had fallen asleep.
“I woke up in the water holding Charlotte, and I woke up right next to the boat, and I saw a hole in the side of the boat and climbed on top and shoved Charlotte up there,” Bossard said, according to Florida Today.
The Coast Guard, along with crews from the Brevard County Sheriff’s Office and Cocoa police and fire departments, responded to the scene just after 10:30 p.m. near the Hubert Humphrey Bridge.
“Four patrol officers jumped in and began searching for the victims. A civilian in a boat nearby also assisted,” the Cocoa Police Department said early Saturday morning in a statement. “The adults and the infant were quickly located but the search continued for nearly one hour for a 23-month old girl.”
Officers said they were about to give up when they heard a faint cry.
“It was very hard to see. My hand in front of me, could barely see that,” Cocoa police Cpl. Alan Worthy told reporters after the incident, according to Florida Today.
Worthy said he pressed his ear to the boat and could “hear her saying something inside,” so he called for another officer, pulled off his gear and jumped into the water.
The toddler – still strapped into her life vest – was floating inside an air pocket underneath the capsized vessel.
Officer Matthew Rush said he “pulled the child down out of the hull of the boat” and out of the river and passed her to medical personnel, according to Florida Today.
“I just made sure she was breathing. She was awake crying, coughing,” Dora Dellatorre, a trauma nurse who was on the scene, said, according to the newspaper. “I just wrapped her up as much as I could with the life vest, and my body heat just kept her awake and comforted her until we got to the shore.”
“It was just amazing to watch. They’re true heroes, whether they admit it or not,” Dellatorre said about the officers.
Authorities said the Florida Fish and Wildlife Conservation Commission is investigating the incident. A spokesman with the commission could not immediately be reached for comment.
“We thought we were going to lose her,” Tammy Bossard told ABC News over the weekend about her toddler.
Kennedy was taken to a hospital for evaluation and later released, police said.
“It’s a miracle,” Bossard said. “It’s a complete miracle that everything worked like it did, because we shouldn’t all be here today.”
(c) 2016, The Washington Post ยท Lindsey Bever
