MARISSA, Ill. (KMOX) - A 13-year-old boy in St. Clair County, Illinois is lucky to be alive after he was swept into the storm drain of a creek and came out the other side during some severe weather on Saturday.
Sebastian Calderon of Marissa, Ill., told Fox 2 he was playing with friends near a creek and when he went to grab a ball near the water he fell in. His mom saw the whole thing while sitting on her deck with her husband.
"He says something about those kids are going to fall in that creek and it was no sooner than that came out of his mouth when Sebastian went down and it was just chaos," she told Fox 2.
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The story from the 13-year-old's perspective in the water is just frightening.
“When I first went in I started to pray," he said. "I kept using my hand to see if it was out of water so I could come up and get some breath. Then I just kept going and at the end I started seeing drains. I kept trying to grab onto them but I couldn’t. So, then I saw the end so I just let it take me to the end.
“When I tried to go up and get a breath, sometimes I just got banged down.”
According to KSDK, the distance from where Calderon went in the culvert and where he came out was about half of a mile. A local firefighter was at the end waiting for the teen and he was rushed to a hospital with some minor cuts and bruises.
A friend who was playing with Calderon said he was "scared" because he "didn’t know if he was going to be alive or not."
The scary incident happened on the same day that a 12-year-old girl was swept away in storm drain and died in St. Louis. She was in a car with family members near St. Louis Lambert International Airport on Saturday when a flash flood pushed the car into a storm drain. Aaeleya Carter was the only one who didn't make it out and her body was found a few hours later in Coldwater Creek near McDonnell Boulevard.
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