Utah Woman Pulled From Ice Reunited With Her Rescuers
Rebecca Peterson fell into freezing water while trying to rescue her dog.
— -- The Utah woman who was pulled out of a frozen reservoir said she wasn’t sure how she would be rescued after her hands went numb.
“When my hands went numb, that’s when I started to panic,” Rebecca Peterson told ABC News. “I knew I was going to be okay [but] I wasn’t sure what a rescue plan was going to be.”
Peterson, 32, was walking her two dogs by the Mantua Reservoir in Utah on Sunday morning when one of the dogs fell into the freezing water.
“My dog, she's my family. It’s just me and her and I couldn’t stand by and watch her drown,” Peterson said of her dog, and why she jumped into the water to save it.
When Peterson stepped onto the reservoir’s thin ice, she said she fell and found herself unable to escape the water.
“I was able to pull myself out and onto the ice but it kept giving out beneath me,” she said.
Peterson was stuck in the water for around 2 minutes until Thomas Braithwaite, a water operator for Brigham City, spotted her in the water and called 911.
“She went under and I thought that was it,” he told ABC News. “I didn’t know if she was coming back up.”
Brad Nelson, a part-time officer for the Mantua Police Department, was the first responder on the scene and used an ice rescue device to pull Peterson out of the nearly 30-feet deep water.
"It's essentially like a Frisbee with a rope tied around it," Nelson told ABC News, describing the device.
Peterson was taken by ambulance to a local hospital and treated for exposure to the elements. She was reunited with her dogs after being released from the hospital.
On Monday, Peterson was able to thank again the two men who saved her and her dog.
“I wouldn’t be here if it wasn’t for you and neither would they,” Peterson said to Nelson and Braithwaite.
Nelson, who described the ice on the reservoir Sunday as especially dangerous, advised pet owners to always call for help before trying to save them.
“It could have been a very tragic situation,” Nelson said of Peterson’s incident.
“People are very fond of their animals but I would suggest that we, you know, call for help,” he said. “Don’t go out on the ice by yourself, especially when you're alone.”
