Hero brothers pull girl from Sheffield river after bridge plunge

Hero brothers pulled a girl from a river in Sheffield after she plummeted from a bridge into the icy water.
The bridge over the River Don at Wardsend Cemetery from which a teenage girl fell. The circles indicate where she fell from and where she landed in the waterThe bridge over the River Don at Wardsend Cemetery from which a teenage girl fell. The circles indicate where she fell from and where she landed in the water
The bridge over the River Don at Wardsend Cemetery from which a teenage girl fell. The circles indicate where she fell from and where she landed in the water

Dan Wild told how he and his brother Joel came to the rescue after hearing a scream and a splash, and then seeing the teenager being swept down the River Don beside Wardsend Cemetery in Owlerton, yesterday afternoon.

As she clung desperately to a rock, he said, they threw in a sling from the back of their van and Dan jumped in while Joel held the other end of the line.

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Dan helped her to the bank, where Joel dragged her from the water, and the pair then wrapped her in blankets before her mother arrived shortly after and took her to hospital.

“We’d just pulled up at the cemetery, where we saw a group of kids no older than 14 on the bridge looking into the water, and as we locked the van we heard a splash and a scream and then heard someone shout ‘ring 999’,” said the 30-year-old water engineer, who lives in Parson Cross.

“My heart stopped. One of the girls had fallen head first off the bridge into the water and was being swept downstream but luckily she got stuck on a rock so we threw the lifting sling in and I jumped in to pull her out.

“The water was freezing. She was shivering when we got her out, and I think she must have been in shock. We phoned her parents who came and collected her before taking her to hospital.

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“They later told me she’d broken a couple of toes, sprained an ankle and was badly bruised but I dread to think what could have happened had we not happened to be in the right place at the right time.

“We don’t want a medal or praise. We just want people to let their kids know the dangers of water.”

Dan told how he and his brother, who is a 27-year-old wagon driver, also from Parson Cross, had the sling in the back of their van as they occasionally do tree surgery as a side line.

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