A pregnant mum has been hailed as a hero after saving four kids from drowning in a lake.
Alyssa DeWitt, 27, wanted to take her children to First Street Beach Pier at Lake Michigan on Tuesday afternoon, but was not completely sure due to strong winds.
The stay-at-home mum from Manistee, Michigan, eventually decided to go.
Once they arrived, Alyssa noticed a group of girls, all under 15, going into the water and became concerned for their safety.
She said: “I happened to look up and saw one of the girls waving her arms towards me and immediately knew something was wrong.
“I got up, pulled my kids out of the water and ran out onto the pier.”
She called 911 but couldn’t hear anything due to the noise made by strong wind and waves.
“I didn’t know if 911 could hear me and I didn’t have time to wait and find out,” she said.
“I set my phone down next to me, hoped they could hear, and I started trying to pull the girls out.”
She laid on her stomach, despite being five months pregnant, and began trying to pull the girls over the rocky and slippery pier.
“Every time I’d get one of them halfway up, a big wave would come smashing into us and knock them back down or almost pull me over,” she said.
“My turning point was when one of the little girls looked at me and said, ‘I’m going to die.’ That was it for me and I was like ‘I’m not going to let you die, I’m going to get you out of this water, I promise.’”
Alyssa managed to pull all three girls out of the water and over the pier before the group set off back towards the shore to rescue a fourth girl who had managed to get closer to shore but couldn’t stand because her leg was injured.
“I honestly do not know how I did it, it was pure adrenaline at that point,” Alyssa said.
“Right after I got everybody onto the beach, the ambulance and the police cars came flying into the parking lot.”
Alyssa sustained a swollen wrist but she and the baby were both fine when she went to the hospital to get checked out.
She said another hero of the day was her six-year-old daughter, who managed to keep her two-year-old brother safe during the ordeal.
Alyssa explained: “Between me screaming into the phone that I needed help and me screaming to the kids what I needed them to do to get them out, I was also turning around and screaming to my son not to come because it wasn’t safe.
“He was very scared and repeatedly tried to run to me on the pier.
“My daughter would pick him up and take him back to the sand and she was so calm and I’m extremely proud of her, she did a great job.”
Alyssa said she is glad that she was there that day to help the girls.
“I’m just extremely grateful that I was put there that afternoon,” she said.
“There was nobody else on that half of the beach, just me, my kids and that group of girls. Had I not been there they wouldn’t have been seen.”
