Free WHIO-TV News app for alerts as news breaks<\/a>]<\/p>\nThe incident happened near the Main Street Bridge around 7:30 p.m. on Sunday. <\/p>\n
Sky 7 captured a view of the water feature that boaters use. Dayton Fire said the Great Miami River can appear calm, but poses some serious dangers. <\/p>\n
James Cummings said he knew about some of those dangers, even ended up experiencing some of them firsthand, but felt like he had to save the kid. <\/p>\n
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\u201cIt was a real fight. It was like. Crazy, like trying to keep him above water, trying to keep myself above water. This is a gnarly situation,\u201d Cummings said. <\/p>\n
He said his Sunday night quickly became chaotic after a calm start. <\/p>\n
He was walking on the path along the Great Miami River at RiverScape MetroPark with a friend when he noticed a 10-year-old boy standing on the water feature and in trouble. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd then I was like, \u2018Are you okay?\u2019 He was like \u2018No.\u2019 And I was like, \u2018Oh.\u2019 The girls like, \u2018Yeah, he was crying and this and that,\u2019\u201d Cummings said. <\/p>\n
He walked out onto the water feature to help the boy. <\/p>\n
\u201cAnd I say, \u2018Hey, can you swim? Are you able to swim?\u2019 He says, \u2018No.\u2019 He says, \u2018I can\u2019t swim.\u2019 I said, \u2018Oh, man.\u2019 I said \u2018OK. Don\u2019t worry. It\u2019s all right,\u2019\u201d Cummings said. <\/p>\n
Cummings took off his shirt and held on as he tossed the other end to the boy to help him climb up the water feature. <\/p>\n
But the boy slipped on the rocks and lost hold of the shirt as the water swept him downstream. <\/p>\n
Cummings jumped in after him. <\/p>\n
\u201cMan, it was a struggle like no other; we really was tussling in that water trying to like stay above,\u201d he said. <\/p>\n
Cummings said he continued to struggle until he found footing in the riverbed. <\/p>\n
\u201cI touched, and I pushed up on the kid with all I\u2019d like tried to separate us. It took a lot of strength, I\u2019m serious, and I separated us, pushed and then I got to him again, and we swam over to the pillar that was supporting the bridge,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
That\u2019s where he said he found footing, again on a rock, as he put the boy on his hip as they held the side of the Main Street bridge for support. <\/p>\n
Firefighters rescued the pair just minutes later. <\/p>\n
\u201cI wasn\u2019t really actually thinking about myself and my safety. I just did see like this kid, and he was all alone,\u201d Cummings said. <\/p>\n
He later told News Center 7\u2019s John Bedell that he saw the boy briefly after firefighters pulled them from the river. <\/p>\n
Cummings said he remembers patting the boy on the back, telling him he was alright and good job. <\/p>\n
Some people call Cummings a hero. He said he appreciates that but thinks what he did was \u201cnormal,\u201d saying, \u201cwe should be able to do these things for each other.\u201d <\/p>\n
[SIGN UP: WHIO-TV Daily Headlines Newsletter<\/a>]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"DAYTON \u2014 Firefighters rescued a child and a good Samaritan from the Great Miami River over the weekend.…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":323991,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[9],"tags":[35478,134068,64266,128253,28473,134069,11181,88229,88223,9288,123,125,124,110433,115,88230,17691,134070,728,1045],"class_list":["post-323990","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-miami","tag-dayton","tag-dayton_fire","tag-great","tag-great_miami_river","tag-james","tag-james_cummings","tag-john","tag-john_bdell","tag-john_bedell","tag-main_street","tag-miami","tag-miami-headlines","tag-miami-news","tag-miami_river","tag-news","tag-news_center","tag-news_center_seven","tag-riverscape_metro_park","tag-street","tag-video"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323990","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=323990"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/323990\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/323991"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=323990"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=323990"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/us-fl\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=323990"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}