YAPHANK, Long Island (WABC) — Officers reunited with an 8-year-old boy they rescued after he fell through the ice on a pond on Long Island.
It happened on Christmas Day in East Patchogue.
The boy was in frigid chest-deep water and unable to get out until the officers tossed him a life ring.
Tayvion, 8, was stranded in the middle of the partially frozen manmade pond at the Heatherwood Lakeside Village Apartments.
“We got you, bud. What’s your name?” Suffolk County Police Officer James Rizzo said.
There’s a reason Officers James Rizzo and Andrew Tirelli kept asking him his name.
“If he’s able to talk, you know he could kind of think things out a little more than rush and break all the ice, and then he falls through,” Rizzo said.
Seconds later, Sergeant Michael Santillo slid out onto the ice himself.
As Tayvion knew he would make it, he had an important safety lesson, especially on these days of freezing cold temperatures.
“Don’t go out on the ice!” he said.
Tayvion spent a short while at the hospital but the officers had him home for Christmas.
“That’s just the personality that police officers have. You don’t think, you act. You go in and do the rescue. You go in the burning building… you get in the water and try to help people,” Officer Santillo said.
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