A “guardian angel” used a drone he usually deploys for shark hunting to save a girl who lifeguards say would have surely drowned if not for his quick thinking and careful piloting, according to reports.
Andrew Smith was ready to go home after work Thursday, but his friends convinced him to head to Pensacola Beach for some night fishing, according to 7 News Miami.
Ten minutes after Smith arrived at the beach pandemonium broke out.
There was a teenage girl struggling in the water, according to reports.
She was getting pulled further away from shore by a powerful riptide.
A girl sprinted up to Smith asking him if he knew how to swim.
“I said ‘no I absolutely could not swim’, and she was running and screaming and nobody could swim,” he said.
That’s when Smith had an idea to use his drone to deliver a flotation device to the girl so she could hold on until help arrived.
“Her friend was getting sucked more and more out, and I looked down at the drone and I was like, ‘well, the drone can swim but I can’t,” said Smith, .
Smith leapt into action.
He ran and grabbed a flotation device and hooked it to his drone.
His first try did not work out.
“I flew it out and it was a terrible miss,” he said. “I released it too early, it was really windy, like it wasn’t close at all.”
Smith knew time was running out for the girl, she was getting pulled further away and had been battling the relentless current for five minutes at that point.
“I was shaking pretty bad, it was nerve wracking, I just about cried,” he told 7 News Miami..
A stranger handed him another flotation device and he tried again, carefully piloting his drone amid powerful gusts of wind.
“After the first one I could tell how windy it was. So then I lowered it down, you had to go slower and slower down to her because that was it,” he said. “That was the last opportunity we were going to have,” he said.
His second approach was a success, a harrowing moment captured on video, and she clung to it for five minutes until paramedics and lifeguards arrived, who credited Smith with saving her life, according to reports.
“If it wasn’t for that second drop, she wouldn’t have made it,” he said rescue workers told him afterward.
The teen’s father praised Smith as a hero.
“He talked to me for like five minutes and called me his guardian angel and thanking me and stuff,” said Smith. “It was pretty crazy.”
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