Dad Saves Toddler Sucked Into Storm Drain

Girl was carried 230 feet through pipe into river swollen with floodwater
By Rob Quinn,  Newser Staff
Posted Sep 9, 2008 3:38 AM CDT
Dad Saves Toddler Sucked Into Storm Drain
Members of a rescue team check on houses surrounded by flood waters in Upton-upon-Severn, England. Heavy rain has caused flooding in many parts of the UK.   (Getty Images)

Emergency workers are praising the "incredibly quick thinking" of a British man who saved his 3-year-old daughter from drowning yesterday after she was sucked into a storm drain with her dog, the Guardian reports. Royal Air Force sergeant Mark Baxter raced to a river just in time to save his daughter Leona as she shot from the pipe into a flood-swollen river 230 feet away.

"She was floating face down in the river," he said. "I leapt over the side and grabbed her." Leona, badly scraped by the journey through the pipe, is expected to make a full recovery. Her dog didn't survive. Flooding killed 8 people in the UK over the weekend and forecasters warn that more heavy rains are on the way.
(More Durham stories.)

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