Man Rescued After Falling Through Ice In Westboro

WESTBORO (CBS) – A 19-year-old man was rescued from an icy pond in Westboro Monday afternoon.

"I started hearing some commotion across the ice 'Help! Help!'" said Ellen Gugel who called 911. Those cries for help were coming from two men ice skating on frozen Mill Pond.

Firefighters arrived within minutes and had to dive in, plucking one of the men from the icy cold waters. The rescue took about 15 minutes. The four-man crew had to wear cold water immersion suits to rescue the 19-year-old.

Gugel says she was just walking her dog when she heard the two men screaming out for help. "I abandoned the dog and ran down to the ice to see what was going on, I saw a guy skating back and forth clearly his buddy had gone in and that's when I whipped out the phone and called 911," Gugel said.

Firefighters had to walk across the frozen pond with an inflatable boat. They found him about 2,000 feet from shore, clinging onto the edge of the ice.

"It was 15 minutes in cold water with wind and everything else, so just sheer exhaustion," said Barry Sullivan of the Westborough Fire Dept. "He was probably giving everything he had left in him just to be able to yell to tell us where he was."

The 19-year-old was skating on the pond with a friend when the ice gave way. Firefighters happened to be doing ice rescue drills just hours before the 911 call came in. A yellow inflatable boat was instrumental in saving a life.

"It gave us a vehicle to get him off the ice, but also if something went wrong on our way out there and the ice was to break underneath us, we have a boat," said Westborough Fire Lt. Chris Dubois.

The victim was rushed to the hospital where he's being treated for hypothermia.