Two Brooklyn Park boys helped rescue a woman who fell through the ice. Here they are pictured with a Sheriff's deputy after the rescue. (Korissa Olson / FOX 9)
BROOKLYN PARK, Minn. (FOX 9) - Some Brooklyn Park boys were in the right place at the right time and potentially saved a woman’s life.
14-year-old Emerson Olson and his 11-year-old brother, Everett, were playing basketball at a park Sunday when two little girls came running up to them asking for help.
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Brooklyn Park boys help rescue woman who fell through ice
Some Brooklyn Park boys were in the right place at the right time and potentially saved a woman’s life.
“They’re like, 'mommy, mommy is in the lake,' and I was really confused, but I decided to go with it and sure enough, there’s a woman struggling in the lake,” the boys said.
“It was like a literal nightmare,” said Sheree Risvold, the woman.
She and her 5-year-old twins, Jameson and Magdalena, and her 2-year-old Imogen had seen the boys playing at the park. While they were there, Jameson, who has autism and wanders off, started running toward a pond behind some trees.
“I followed him and I kept telling him to come back, this is dangerous, come back,” Risvold said. “He got all the way across the pond and once I got to the center, the ice started to crack and I fell through.”
She says Jameson slipped in the hole with her, but she was able to push him out and keep him away. She said her worst fear was that he would fall through the ice at a different spot on the pond and she wouldn’t be able to get to him.
“I just told my daughters, I said, 'I need you to go get the boys at basketball,'” Risvold said.
“I was very freaked out, but I didn’t want to freak out too much because I didn’t want to make the situation worse,” the boys said.
Emerson called 911 and Everett helped keep the kids off the ice until Brooklyn Park Police and the Hennepin County Sheriff’s Office could get Sharee out of the water.
“I’m glad they were here because it would have been much more difficult to figure out the situation,” she said.
The boys said they typically don’t go to that park, so it was fate they were there and ready to help on Sunday.
“It was really lucky that we were there,” the boys said.