Feb. 14, 2023 Three Buffalo police officers—including an Underwater Recovery and Rescue Team member—rescued a woman who fell into frigid water as her husband kept her from slipping further.
By Dale Anderson Source The Buffalo News, N.Y. Distributed by Tribune Content Agency, LLC.
“It’s a situation that could have turned very tragic,” Buffalo Police Commissioner Joseph A. Gramaglia declared in a press conference Monday, a day after officers rescued a woman who fell through ice along the shore at Broderick Park.
The woman, who was taken to Erie County Medical Center for treatment of possible hypothermia, was pulled to safety about 11 a.m. by three officers and her husband, who had held her arm to keep her from slipping further into the frigid water until help arrived.
Police Officer Anthony Banas, a member of the department’s Underwater Recovery and Rescue Team, handed a life sling carried in a patrol car to the husband and instructed him how to place it on the woman. Gramaglia said the rescue took less than 10 minutes.
“We all pulled from a safe distance,” Banas said at the press conference, “so we wouldn’t slip and fall along the ice.”
Gramaglia noted that there isn’t much ice on the lake or other bodies of water this winter and warned, “All ice should be considered not safe.”