Pamela Neville told WCPO.com that screaming she heard prompted her to go outside. “I got thinking, there’s the lake, there’s ice — danger,” she said.
Neville said she called 911 while her husband and son tried to save the boys. Using a life jacket tied to an electrical cable, they ran a few hundred yards down the bank. Neville’s son, John, jumped onto a boat, using oars to break the ice. He guessed the boys were about 100 feet out on the water.
John Neville told WCPO.com, “One boy — the younger boy — he was screaming ‘I don’t want to die! Please don’t let me die!’ I said, ‘Hang in there buddy, I won’t let you drown. I won’t let anything happen to you. Just hold on for a minute.’ “
He said he got halfway to the boys before throwing out the cable to reel them in.
“I jumped in the water and pulled them up on the shore right as the same time the paramedics were showing up,” John Neville said.
Two medical helicopters took the boys to the University of Cincinnati Medical Center. Ambulances took them to children’s hospital in Cincinnati.
The boys are between the ages of 8 and 12. What remains unclear is whether the boys are related or friends.
A whio.com request to speak with the Brown County sheriff has not been answered.
FIRST REPORT
Two children under the age of 13 have been taken to Children’s Hospital Medical Center in Cincinnati after they were pulled from icy Lake Lorelei in Brown County this afternoon.
Our news partners at WCPO.com report that two medical helicopters were dispatched to ferry the children, according to Brown County emergency dispatch.
The children are believed to be between the ages of 8 and 12, according to the sheriff’s office.
Lake Lorelei is a gated community in Brown County, Ohio, near the village of Fayetteville, roughly 58 miles southeast of Dayton.
We will update this developing report as we get information.