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Officer's Quick Actions Saved Drowning Teen

KENT, Ohio— A Kent Police Department Patrolman made a snap decision and saved a teen from drowning in the Cuyahoga River.

Saturday evening, Officer Jim Ennemoser heard an emergency call for the fire department over the scanner, and decided to head to the river himself.

He got there first.

“I was coming down the path right here, I could hear people yelling to the people in the water to try and make it to shore,” Ennemoser said, while pointing to the spot of the incident.

A teen was struggling in the water, going under, trying to swim, but he couldn’t.

Officials say while the water may look calm on the surface, there can be swift currents underneath.

“One male went underwater about a foot, foot and a half, and he wasn’t coming back to the surface,” Ennemoser said.

Ennemoser is a K-9 officer, and if it wasn’t for his dog, Aiko, the outcome could have been tragic. Aiko didn’t help save the boy, but his tracking harness and 30-foot tracking lead did.

“I threw my tracking harness right on top of [the teen] and it hit him in the head, and he was able to grab that, and then I pulled him up close into shore, and once he got up onto shore, I pulled him up all the way,” Ennemoser said.

The teen was checked out by Kent EMS before being released to his parents.

But that’s not the only rescue the patrolman has made recently: Ennemoser pulled four people out of the river in the last two days.

He also helped the boy’s friend and a woman out of the water who had jumped in to save the drowning teen.

Then, there was a separate incident the night before, when a guy running from police jumped in the river and got in over his head, literally.

Ennemoser says he wants to find the woman who jumped in to help the boy yesterday.

She left before he could thank her.