Fishermen pull distressed boy from water at tournament

The tale is just like a boastful old fisherman’s: he and a buddy are at a bass tournament when they rescue a struggling boy from the water, and then they go on to reel in the most weight and win the competition.

Well, it’s a true story, and it happened at Carlyle Lake on Sunday, but the two fishermen involved insist they don’t deserve all the credit.

The boy was actively trying to sit up by the time Kevin McAllister and Josh Rakers handed him off to EMTs — and they later won the tournament with 11.2 lbs., including a 4.75-pound bass — but the 10-year-old’s official status was still unknown as of Wednesday afternoon.

The two fishermen didn’t see the boy at first, McAllister said. He and Rakers were just trying to get loose from a snag when a woman on shore spotted a child having trouble swimming 20 to 30 meters from the shore and alerted them to him.

“If anything, she should be getting the attention,” McAllister said, though he didn’t know her name.

The two men pulled alongside the boy, but he was unresponsive. It was “kind of scary” at first, McAllister said, but the child, who was wearing a life preserver and floating face up, was breathing.

The woman on shore called emergency services while a man — another helpful person, McAllister said — ran to the other side of the cove to get the boy’s parents.

McAllister and Rakers pulled the boy into the boat and were directed by Carlyle EMTs to keep his airway open and put ice on his forehead.

On the shore, however, the child was still unresponsive, so his mother told him to squeeze her hand if he could. He did.

McAllister and Rakers have gotten considerable attention since the incident, which spread quickly on Facebook. Then, on Tuesday morning, the Illinois Department of Corrections, McAllister’s employer — he works as a corrections officer in Centralia — wrote a post that was shared almost 400 times and garnered almost 100 comments in 18 hours.

But, McAllister noted there were many people involved.

“We don’t want all that credit just for us,” he said.

This story was originally published August 10, 2016 at 4:57 PM with the headline "Fishermen pull distressed boy from water at tournament."