Mother thanks 'wingless angels' for brave rescue

Richard Foot
National Post

Thursday, November 21, 2002

HALIFAX — It seems extraordinary that four-year-old Evan Grace is alive. Yet today he lies in a Halifax hospital — breathing on his own, his eyes wide open — with Shelley Yates, his mother, sitting at his side.

Mrs. Yates and her son owe their lives to good fortune and the courage of strangers who launched a daring rescue after their car flipped off a Nova Scotia highway last week and sank nose-first into a flooded, roadside swamp.

“The cold water took me fast,” she said. “I felt myself slipping away ... My last thoughts were to miraculously find my sweet baby so we could at least die together.”

Yesterday, Mrs. Yates made her first public comments about the rescue.

In a letter published in two Halifax newspapers, she thanked the dozens of city residents who helped bring her son back to life — in particular the “wingless angels,” as she called them, who found the sinking car and “pulled us from death's clutches.”

Mark Hoadley is one of those “angels.” Yesterday, he said in an interview that he and his friends are not heroes, just ordinary people who reacted, “one hopes, like anyone else would,” after stumbling upon calamity.

Mrs. Yates, 37, was driving with her son last Thursday on a two-lane highway on the outskirts of Halifax. Days of torrential rains had soaked the city and flooded the large ponds on each side of the highway, one of which was pouring across the road. When Mrs. Yates' Ford Taurus hit the shallow flood, it hydroplaned into the guardrail and off the highway, landing upside down on the surface of the pond.

The mother began to panic, however, when she realized her car was sinking in the pond. Water was rushing in and neither her doors nor her windows would open because the electrical accessories had short-circuited.

As Mrs. Yates prepared to die, Mr. Hoadley sped past in his pickup. The co-owner of a construction business, he spotted two friends — Paddy Hilchie, his business partner, and Jeff Winters, a Halifax police officer — driving in the other direction. He called Mr. Hilchie on his cellphone to say hello.

Their conversation had barely started when Mr. Hoadley noticed the sinking car, told his buddies what he had seen, and hung up to call for help on the 911 emergency line. Mr. Hilchie and Mr. Winters turned around and met Mr. Hoadley on the roadside overlooking the accident.

Mr. Winters, a paramedic, stayed on shore while his friends, who are in their 40s, swam into almost three metres of frigid water. With Mr. Hilchie helping his buddy from the surface, Mr. Hoadley dove to see what he could find. After several attempts he managed to open the driver's door and came face to face with an unconscious Mrs. Yates, strapped into her seat with the seat belt jammed.

A crowd was gathering on shore. One man threw Mr. Hoadley a pocketknife to cut the seat belt. Taking a deep breath, Mr. Hoadley dove back down, his feet hooked into the seat belt for purchase. Before he began cutting, the belt somehow popped open.

“So I went back up for air and went down again and basically grabbed her by the hair and jacket and pulled her up and gave her to Paddy,” Mr. Hoadley said.

The men carried a lifeless Mrs. Yates to shore, where Mr. Winters began resuscitation efforts. Mr. Hoadley and another man returned to the water to search for others in the submerged car. They found no one, but before they could climb out of the pond, Mrs. Yates came to life.

“Do you have my baby,” she asked.

“Jeff hollered out, 'There's a baby in the car,' ” Mr. Hoadley said. “At that point, all hell broke loose for us. We tried everything we could to find him but the water was so murky we just couldn't see anything.”

Someone on shore had summoned a boom truck from a nearby industrial yard. The truck arrived, hooked on to the car and raised it from the pond. Little Evan, whose mother had released him from his car seat, had become wedged in the shelf between the rear seats and the rear window. As the water rushed out of the vehicle, he came flying out.

He and his mother were taken to hospital as were Mr. Hoadley and Mr. Hilchie, both suffering from hypothermia.

Mr. Hoadley said he cannot understand how Evan survived. He believes the little boy was under water for 15 to 20 minutes before being rescued.

“We did everything we could to help and I'm proud of that. But we're not heroes,” Mr. Hoadley said. "That little fella, coming back from what he's been through — he's the hero.”

Evan's condition was upgraded to fair from critical yesterday. “There's no brain damage.... He's up and around,” RCMP spokesman Peter Marshall said.