Positivity: Boy Honored for Heroic Rescue
From Baltimore County, Maryland:
He saved young neighbor from drowning; ‘He was our guardian angel’
8:54 PM EDT, August 24, 2007When his neighbors spotted him in the pool without his life jacket and without his parents, 2-year-old Max Woods was thrashing in the water and headed toward the deep end.
Pamela Boyle dropped a bowl she had been holding, and started screaming, “Oh my God. Go get him.”
Patrick Boyle hopped over the fence, rushed through the gate to his neighbor’s pool and jumped in with his clothes on to grab the toddler — just in time.
The rescue earned Patrick a hero pin Friday from Baltimore County Executive James T. Smith Jr. The quick thinking and bravery would be extraordinary in anyone, Smith noted.
But the thing about Patrick is that he’s 10 years old.
“There aren’t words,” said a still-emotional Jennifer Woods, mother of Max, during the ceremony Friday in Towson. “He was our guardian angel.”
Patrick wasn’t supposed to be swimming that June day because he had an ear infection. But he was outside his Parkville home, with his 9-year-old brother, Shawn, and 7-year-old sister, Mikayla, who were swimming in their above-ground pool, which gives them a view of the neighbor’s in-ground pool.
Shawn first noticed Max in the pool, without his parents, and began yelling to his mom, Pamela Boyle. But Patrick had hopped the fence by the time she got out of the house, screaming, “Get Maxie.”
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