Emergency personnel responded to a wreck Saturday evening in the Runaway Lake subdivision that resulted in a Volkswagen Rabbit becoming submerged in the lake. None of the vehicle’s occupants, including three children and two adults, were injured in the incident.
The wreck was reported to Spalding County 911 at 7:33 p.m.
“It (the vehicle) had five occupants — three small children and two adults,” SCFD Battalion Chief David White said. “That’s how the call came in.”
White said emergency personnel responding to the incident did not know if any of the occupants were trapped in the vehicle. Upon arrival, it was discovered that all five occupants were safe.
“By some miracle of God, they were able to get out of the car in the water before any law enforcement or EMS personnel arrived on the scene,” he said. “They were sitting up on the bank at the edge of the pavement when we arrived. It’s my understanding that they lost control of the vehicle and it flipped over and entered the water. It was three-quarters submerged. It was upright, but the top of the vehicle was crushed from the rollover, so that actually minimized the space they had to crawl out of. You would never look at that car and think that people would walk away from that with no injuries, but they did.”
Due to the nature of the wreck — the vehicle being submerged in the lake — the UERT was activated in case an underwater rescue or recovery mission was necessary.
“The call went out initially as a traffic accident with five people inside the vehicle, but while we were en route, we were notified that all five occupants had safely gotten out of the vehicle so our mission at that time became recovering the vehicle and that’s what we did,” said Capt. Tony Ranieri, of the SCSO, who also serves as the Dive Team commander.
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