US President Donald Trump on Monday (local time) met a teenage lifeguard and the boy he rescued off the California coast, praising the rescue and the boy’s composure during the ordeal as “incredible.”
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Sixteen-year-old lifeguard Ryder Williams and 10-year-old Nathaniel Rai were honoured at a White House ceremony also attended by their families, days after Trump announced that he would invite the pair to recognise their bravery.
“What you did was incredible, and everybody saw it,” he told the duo, referring to a viral video of the July rescue in Santa Cruz. “When I first saw it, I said, ‘roll that back, I want to see that again.’”
Asked about the moment, Williams credited his training for helping him react quickly.
“In those dangerous moments that we have, we always try to fall back on our training,” he recalled. “I really was thinking about how to get the boy out of the water as fast as I can.”
