An 84-year-old Regina woman who dozed off while driving and found herself trapped in her SUV after veering off a road into a slough near Craven, Sask. says the men who saved her should get an award for bravery.
Matt Mario and his father were driving on Highway 20 to get gas in Craven on July 5 when they came across multiple cars pulled over by the side of the road near Riverside Sausages, about 2.5 kilometres northwest of Craven.
Mario said the crowd had noticed the SUV in the water with a woman inside and called 911 around 12:45 p.m. CST.
He wanted to jump in to rescue the woman and her little dog, but was told the 911 dispatcher did not want anyone to do anything except wait for police to arrive, he said.
“Which makes sense because they don’t want other injuries and stuff like that. So we waited around a bit, and then we watched it probably submerge another foot when we were standing there.”
At that point, his father told him to jump in and try to help, he said.
“The water was about up to my chest. You could walk on [the bottom], but it was like quicksand down there, so you couldn’t stand for awhile or else you could potentially get stuck in there.”
He swam to the SUV and checked all of its doors, but they were locked, and the woman inside, Marjorie Flavel, could not unlock them.
Mario hopped up onto the car and got Flavel to try opening the sunroof. To his relief, it worked.
“She was pretty scared, so I calmed her down and tried to use as much as I could to keep her calm and say, ‘We’re not leaving you here … you’re coming with us,'” he recalled.
Flavel first handed her little dog, Angel, to Mario. Then he focused on getting her out of the sinking vehicle.
“She still had her seatbelt on because she was just in shock a little bit. So I got her to take her seatbelt off and helped her out of the vehicle,” Mario said.
“It was a very tight space in that sunroof. So it was kind of tough to get her out. But I got her out, got her sitting on the roof.”
By that point, he was joined by another bystander, Alex Agari. Both men helped Flavel into the water.
“She was terrified of the water, can’t swim. So she was very scared about that,” Mario said.
“And I said, ‘You wrap your arms around me, like, whatever you need to do.’ I held her hand the whole way and got her back to shore.”
Flavel, 84, said being rescued before emergency crews arrived was “such a relief.”
After returning to safety, she spoke with the 911 dispatcher.
“They wanted to send an ambulance and I said no,” she said.
“I said I didn’t get hurt so they didn’t need to send an ambulance. I’m like, at least it wasn’t a hearse,” she said, laughing.
Later on, Flavel posted about the rescue on Facebook. Someone who works for Mario recognized him from her post and told her his name. Mario then found her on Facebook and connected with her.
She made plans to meet with Mario and Agario over the weekend for lunch.
“Both of them are my angels and heroes,” Flavel said. “So they should be awarded with the hero [medal] because they were tremendous.”
