By Puneet Bsanti
The News Tribune (Tacoma, Wash.)
TACOMA, Wash. — Police officer Steve O’Neal and his colleagues were having lunch Monday at a Tacoma Police Department substation when they heard over the radio that a teenager was drowning in Wapato Lake. Realizing the lake was nearby, they immediately ran over to help.
The call came in at 2:11 p.m. of a 15-year-old girl submerged in several feet of water in the 7000 block of South Ainsworth Avenue. The teenager reportedly had been arguing with friends and accidentally went into the water. Her friends tried to help get her out but were unable to, so 911 was called, O’Neal told reporters outside Tacoma Police Department headquarters on Tuesday.
O’Neal said he did not hesitate to jump in when he and his colleagues saw the girl in the water. O’Neal said they could see her face barely above the water, and she was not moving. He swam in the murky water and grabbed the teenager.
“So it was very shallow when I walked in, and as I got closer to her it was a drop off,” he said.
O’Neal said it was difficult to push her to shore himself because he was wearing heavy police gear, so he pushed her to another officer.
“My biggest thing was just to get her back to shore, and you don’t practice this kind of stuff. So I had no idea how difficult it was to move somebody out of water while you’re in water,” he said. “I just remember playing with my kids in the pool and getting underneath, hitting the ground and jumping up to push them up.”
O’Neal said when officers brought her to shore, they moved her into a recovery position. She vomited all the water that was in her stomach, and the Fire Department helped take over with medical aid.
The teenager was taken to a local hospital and was reportedly in stable condition. O’Neal said that the girl’s father went to the substation after he had left to say thank you.
“There’s no training scenario I’ve been through to just run into a lake, but I know that if it was my family or my daughter, that’s what I’d be doing. Just going in there — it’s just an instinct,” he said. “And I know that anybody in our department would have done the same thing.”
O’Neal said that he grew up in Tacoma, and people used to be able to swim in Wapato Lake, but now it is not a safe area to do that. As the weather is warming up, and more children are going outside, O’Neal advises that everyone should go out in pairs.
“That’s really what happened in this situation. She was with some friends, and so when she was unable to call 911, they called for her,” he said.
It was O’Neal’s first water rescue. He said that as a parent and police officer, there’s no hesitation to protect and save other people.
“I can’t take all the credit. My whole squad ran out mid-eating lunch. And you know, every single one of us dropped what we were doing and just ran towards the lake,” he said.
This story was originally published April 9, 2024 , 3:30 PM .
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