Reed sank chest deep into the cold muck and Nick, who tried to come to his aid, sank to his knees. For 15 minutes, the two boys panicked and cried, trying in vain to free themselves.
Then Nick managed to wrest himself from his boots, crawl on his belly across the treacherous trap and sprint to Reed’s home.
Hearing the panic in the young boy’s voice as he hollered for help, Bob and Stephanie Norman dashed out the door to rescue their son, Stephanie clad only in her nightgown and Bob, who was bathing the family dog, trailing behind in a pair of shorts and a jacket.
“You don’t really expect to see what you’re seeing,” Bob Norman said. “It’s not making a ton of sense.”
Running across an area where families typically play football and frisbee, Stephanie Norman was unaware of the danger below. By the time Bob Norman reached the scene, his wife was hysterical and waist-deep in the mud.
“She tried to walk out to him and pick him up but she found herself in the same predicament,” he said. “She couldn’t move forward, backward or sideways. It was like glue.”
Norman latched on to a nearby branch and inched his way across the muddy mess, trying to calm his family.
“I told them ‘Stop panicking. Let’s just do this. We can do it,’” Norman said.
After 15 minutes of a lifting effort that found him up to his hips in mud, Norman managed to free his wife and son and get them into the house, where 16-year-old daughter MacKenzie had already dialed 9-1-1 and tended to Nick.
Caked with whatever dried up clay and mud hadn’t dripped to the floor of their home, the family was examined by members of the Hamilton Twp. life squad, who found Nick’s core temperature to be in the low 90s and Reed’s to be in the high 80s.
“He told them he was so cold he couldn’t feel anything,” Norman said.
Reed was transported via ambulance to Cincinnati Children’s Liberty Campus and Nick was transported to Bethesda Medical Center at Arrow Springs, both of them ““for evaluation purposes only,” according to Hamilton Twp. Fire Chief Mark Greatorex.
Fire personnel put up caution tape around the perimeter of the pond and mud to prevent further incidents, according to reports.
Norman credits Nick for his bravery and for conveying the urgency of the situation.
“If it wasn’t for Nick coming to get us ...Reed would have been out there for I don’t know how long,” he said. “He made it clear it was a serious problem.”
Norman has since contacted the homeowner’s association to voice his concerns about the site, which he said lacked any warning signs or caution tape.
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