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A pickup truck belonging to Debra Titus, of Plymouth, Massachusetts, ended up submerged in a pond in Carver on June 7, 2014. Titus and one of her dogs managed to escape the truck as it sank, but a second dog, spooked by the situation, remained trapped underwater by the time officers arrived on scene.
Carver Police Officer David Harriman, described by his department as an avid dog lover, didn’t hesitate. He handed off his gun belt to his partner and dove straight into the water, diving under roughly eight feet to reach the submerged vehicle, manage to open the car door, and pull the trapped dog free.
According to a statement from the Carver Police Department, the dog was returned to Titus in good health, though understandably a little frightened by the ordeal.
A photo of Harriman carrying the dog out of the pond quickly went viral on Facebook, drawing more than 20,000 likes and 2,500 shares within just 18 hours, a striking number for a department that had fewer than 1,000 followers only two days earlier. “Officer Harriman is a true hero to me,” one commenter wrote on the department’s page. “He didn’t have to do what he did… You’re a fantastic human being.”
My thoughts: What’s easy to miss in a story like this is how quickly Harriman had to make the decision, there wasn’t time to weigh options with a dog trapped underwater in a sinking vehicle, just an immediate choice to hand off his gear and go in after it.
It’s also a good example of how a single photo, in this case captured at exactly the right moment, can turn a routine act of bravery from a small local department into something that reaches tens of thousands of people almost overnight.
More than a decade later, it still holds up as a clean example of the instinct that drives so many of these rescue stories, someone simply refusing to stand at the edge of the water.
Source: Boston.com
