Three teenagers sped to the rescue last week when a nearby boat overturned and deposited its occupants into the water.
Evan Kamoen, 18, of Killingworth, Connecticut, was fishing with his friends Luke Voegeli and Ryan Kelly on Long Island Sound when they heard a VHF distress call from a nearby boat that was taking on water.
The teenagers made their way over to help, but when they got to the other boat it suddenly overturned. “It happened fast,” said Kamoen. “We all saw the boat just slowly…and then whoosh, right over.”
According to the Department of Energy and Environmental Protection (DEEP), there were five 72- to 80-year-old men aboard. The teens said that three of the men couldn’t swim. They rescued four of them and another boat came in time to pick up the fifth man.
“Lifejackets, the use of Marine VHF Radios, and the monitoring of Channel 16 by the Good Samaritan rescue vessels saved the lives of these five men,” DEEP Environmental Conservation Officer Alexandra Blackwell said. The men declined to be identified but they called the teens “lifesavers.”
Kamoen said he and his friends were just a bunch of teens. “If you come across a situation like that, you just have to do what you have to do,” he said.
