An elderly man who fell through the ice on a frozen Michigan lake was rescued after a quick-thinking state police officer used the stranded man’s dog to get rescue equipment to him and pull him to safety.
On Jan. 18, after a 65-year-old Traverse City man fell through ice-covered Arbutus Lake, bystanders called 911, state police reported.
Body camera footage captured by Michigan State Police Motor Carrier Officer Kammeron Bennetts shows the man initially trapped in frigid waters with just his head and shoulders above thin ice and his dog standing beside him.
In the footage, MCO Bennetts first tries to throw a rescue disc tethered to a rope out to the man. When it fails, MCO Bennetts asks the man to send his dog to him.
“Send your pup here. Will she come to me?” he yells to the man, who replies that his dog’s name is Ruby.
“Ruby, come here! Come here, Ruby!” MCO Bennetts is heard shouting in the video before whistling for the canine, who runs to him and arrives with her tail wagging.
The officer ties the rescue disc to the dog’s collar and asks the man to call Ruby back to him. When she returns to her owner, MCO Bennetts tells the man to take the disc from Ruby and to start kicking his legs.
“Bring your feet up to the surface by kicking your feet!” he yells, pulling the man onto the lake’s icy surface and urging him to hold onto the disc as he keeps pulling on the rope, dragging him onto safer ice near the lake’s edge. MCO Bennetts and a local firefighter are then able to grab his arms to complete the rescue, with Ruby still attached to the rope.
