A few minutes later and it would have been too late.
A South Florida man talked Tuesday about the moments he rescued a woman after her car plunged into a canal in Fort Lauderdale over the weekend.
“I’m just glad I was in the right place at the right time," Mark Goodman said.
The tech consultant says he was walking in his neighborhood when he saw a car speed past him — he then heard a screech of the brakes before it plunged right into a canal.
“She pretty much went through the barrier and over the embankment, probably going full speed," Goodman said. "And she caught quite a bit of air and landed literally almost in the middle of the fairly wide body of water.”
Goodman says he told his wife to call 911 and then dove into the murky waters. As he swam over, he said the woman appeared to be in shock.
“I said, 'I’m gonna have to open the door and this car’s gonna fill up very fast. We’ve got literally four seconds to get out,'" Goodman said. "So I opened the door and sure enough, the water came in so fast and then the car started tipping."
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He says her foot then got caught in the door as the car was sinking.
It was an exhausting process — but with the help of others in a nearby boat, they were able to get the driver out safely.
Divers with Fort Lauderdale Fire Rescue also searched the waters to make sure there were no other passengers.
Goodman doesn’t consider himself a hero, but he described the moment his adrenaline kicked in. He says he also thought about his own family to get him through the rescue.
"You know, some things go through your head," he said. "Like, am I gonna be able to go in there? But seeing this poor car in the middle with nobody else around and thinking, if I don’t do something, this is a bad situation."
An ambulance took that driver to the hospital, where she was treated for minor injuries.
