Unknown couple rescues boys who fell in frozen Utah Lake

PROVO, Utah — Three families are sending their thanks to an unknown couple who saved three boys from drowning in the frozen Utah Lake Wednesday night.

The three teenagers were hanging out at Pelican Bay, Saratoga Springs when they decided to walk out on the frozen lake. But as they got farther from the dock, the ice got gradually thinner.

“We were just inching our way out farther and farther from the dock,” Austin Weilacher told KSLTV. “The ice seemed really thick, but the farther we walked, the thinner it got. I started to hear cracking.”

The ice cracked and pulled two of the boys under, leaving Weilacher panicked above the surface.

Weilacher said he tried to pull his friends from the lake, but the effort caused more ice break-off.

“Once I fell in, it was super hard to breathe,” he said. “It was so cold.”

The boys thrashed in the water, trapped by the thick ice that remained intact. They said that as they tried to keep their heads above water, the ice cut their arms and throats.

“I was stuck,” said Carson LaMeyer, one of the boys who fell in. “I was pounding on the ice trying to break through.”

The teenagers managed to swim back to the dock, but were too exhausted and suffering from the cold water to pull themselves onto the dock. There, a man and woman — whom the boys say they’ve never seen before — pulled them out of the water.

The boys report not seeing anyone near the lake when they got there — and they have no idea who the man and woman were.

Cammy Patton, a mother of one of the boys, said the couple saved her son’s life.

“When I arrived home and saw all his cuts and scrapes from the ice, I wrapped Carson in an embrace and didn’t want to let go,” Patton said with tears in her eyes in an interview with KSL TV. “Some parents don’t get to hug their child again after a traumatic situation. But I did, and I am so grateful.”

Patton is calling the unknown Good Samaritans “heaven-sent.”

Sources say the boys are all expected to recover.