You hope when you wake up each day, you can do some good. But in the case of a good Samaritan who helped pull a box truck driver from the water after the vehicle launched into the Crow River Monday evening near Rogers, Minnesota, he went above and beyond.
To set the scene, Monday evening in the Twin Cities the temperature was 0 and the wind chill was 22 below zero. Not exactly the type of weather that makes you want to jump in a river.
Christopher Kirk was behind the truck went he saw it veer to the right, hit a sign and guardrail and then careen into the mostly frozen Crow Wing River.
"Running down it, with how the snow was there and ice and everything else, I ended up just doing a baseball slide all the way down to the bottom," says Kirk. "His shoulder was submerged and his head was partially submerged. So if I didn't get down there I didn't know what was going to happen."
Kirk said he didn't hesitate at all despite the freezing cold.
He called 911 and then went to work, sliding down a bank towards the river, jumping into the water and pulling himself up on the bed of the truck. Kirk told WCCO he actually jumped into the water to get to the man in the truck.
"At that point, I grabbed his right arm, pulled him up on the flatbed," Kirk explains. "I unlatched the seat belt to let him free and between the two of us, we were able to pull him up onto a flatbed."
The Minnesota State Patrol says the 25-year-old man was driving a Chevrolet box truck northbound on Highway 101 north of Minneapolis when the vehicle went off the roadway.
"When I seen him launch up and completely over the bridge, I didn't know what I was getting into. I didn't know what I was going to see, I didn't know what was going to happen," Kirk said.
The man who crashed into the river is expected to be okay, and certainly grateful for the icy rescue.
"It was one of the craziest things I've seen or been a part of," Kirk explained to WCCO. "To see that truck get completely off the ground and disappear. And to get to that guardrail, and look over and still see someone moving."