Pensacola, Fl
Asay Williams never stopped thinking when his father dived into Santa Rosa Sound and failed to show up for several seconds.
9-year-old Pensacola acted.
“All I remember he said he broke his neck and said he was afraid,” Asayeh remembers on Wednesday, several days after the accident. “I had a small time limit in my head. If I jump and don’t talk about the person I’m hopping with at that particular time in time (he didn’t come), I chase them.”
Asaih never trained for any real swimming technical training – he just knew that something was terribly wrong at that moment and he was the only person able to help.
The decisive moment came at the end of a relaxing day at Quietwater Beach for the Pensacola family of five on Saturday. The Williams family had just spent every day swimming and relaxing when Asaih, shortly after sunset, persuaded his father, Josh, to make a last dip before calling him on the night.
“I was at the beach with these little ones,” said Audrey Williams, mother of Asayeh and the two children of the other couple. “They were kind of playing around where the ferry docks, so it’s about 15 feet deep there. Then they went a little further, to the right, at the end, where it was more shallow. They couldn’t do it” I don’t see that well. “
While Audrey stayed 50 feet ashore, occupied with her two young children, her legs jumped first into the water and then Josh, who dipped his head first. But the water was much less shallow than the family – who had recently moved to Pensacola from Georgia, had expected.
Audrey said: “Aseer saw that my father was not coming as quickly as he should have, and he knew that something was wrong.” “His heart, because Josh was on his stomach. Asayah turned him over because he couldn’t move.”
Despite the 100-pound weight difference between father and son, Asaih channeled a bit of piercing strength into his father’s heart and made sure he wasn’t in danger of drowning, as he clearly had just suffered a neck injury.
Audrey remembers: “Josh told me from the hospital, ‘I knew when it was affected, my neck went.’
Asaih kept his father flipping over his back and slowly pushed him to the beach for what seemed to be eternity so that passers-by could carry some of the burden from the boy.
A Asayeh man helped his father reach the ground, while a woman called an ambulance.
Josh Williams was transferred to Baptist Hospital Saturday night as preparedness for shock. Shortly thereafter he was transported to the Sacred Heart for C1-C3 fusion surgery on Monday.
“He’s working on trying to regain the sensation in his arms and legs. His left side is worse than his right,” Audrey said, adding that the early speculation is that Josh’s injury won’t change his life, and he won’t require a wheelchair in the long term. “Doctors say he must recover completely. He is advancing very quickly. He raised his head and sat in a chair
Asayi visited a doctor this week after the boy suffered some pain in his right leg due to the jump. His mother said that Asaih deals with a little inflammation and should return to 100% by the end of the week, if not before.
Asayeh said, “I am very grateful to have (Asayeh) for him because if he was not there, it is possible that my husband would not be here today.” “The fact that a 9-year-old was thinking very quickly, ‘Oh, I have to help, I’m the only one here to help him. “He brought him back to the beach himself. He’s my father’s hero, that’s for sure.”
