Three bystanders said they didn't think twice when they saw a black Acura drive through the fence and into a Smyrna neighborhood's swimming pool Thursday morning.
"We all jumped in," David Huebner told the AJC.
It was a good thing they did. A man who apparently suffered a medical emergency was still wearing his seat belt when his sedan plunged into the pool around 11:30 a.m.
Huebner had been painting the the clubhouse in the Oakdale Bluffs subdivision off Oakdale Road and was talking to his co-worker, Eddie Brinkley, when they watched the car run over the curb and down a small embankment into the pool.
Huebner called 911, then jumped into the pool behind Brinkley and a homeowner. The three men pushed the car to the shallow end of the pool and quickly tried to get its driver out.
"We saw the guy shaking," Huebner said. "Then he just passed out."
As water started to fill the car, the man opened his eyes but was still unresponsive, Huebner said. "I asked if he could take off his seat belt, and he had no idea what I was asking."
The three men pulled the man from the driver's seat and got him out of the water as gasoline and oil from the car began to spill into the pool, Brinkley said. Within minutes, an ambulance and firefighters arrived to take the man to the hospital for evaluation.
"If nobody had been here, he would have drowned within a minute," Brinkley said.
The rescuers had a momentary scare when they noticed a baby carrier in the back seat.
"I didn't think anything about there being another person," Brinkley said.
But fortunately, only the driver was in the car at the time, Brinkley said Thursday afternoon while watching a crew pull the car from the water. A few stuffed animals were floating in the pool along with other items from inside the car.
No one was injured in the incident. But those at the neighborhood clubhouse said had it happened a few hours later, it could have been a disaster.
"The pool was empty, thank God," Huebner said. "Yesterday afternoon, all of these chairs were full of people."
Crews pulled the car out of the water and loaded it onto a flatbed wrecker around 2:45 p.m. The next step was to get the pool drained and cleaned.
The driver is expected to be OK despite the apparent medical emergency, Lt. Shannon Turner with the Smyrna Fire Department told the AJC. "He was just in the wrong place when it happened," Turner said.
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