A young boy took a mile-long ride in a storm drain during a flood and survived. Click below to hear him share his story!
That must have been a wild ride.
An 8-year-old boy is safe and sound after being swept into a storm drain and travelling through the sewer before surfacing in the woods a mile away.
Kenny Markiewicz of Duluth, Minn., had just stepped into what looked like a regular puddle Wednesday afternoon when he disappeared, pulled into a concrete pipe along with water from the flood that had overtaken the city, according to the Star Tribune newspaper.
There were no signs of what was about to happen to Kenny that Wednesday afternoon — their street wasn’t flooded, and it wasn’t raining, according to ABC News.
“I never let my child leave my sight. There was a split second,” his mother Amber Markiewicz told ABC. “He just was going across by the puddle and, apparently, there was a culvert or a pipe there and he fell in. We heard my niece scream that and we opened the door, ran down the hill and dialed 911.”
Markiewicz felt around in the puddle and discovered the opening of the pipe.
Kenny travelled about a mile before the sewers spit him out in the woods near a trailer park. A man who lived nearby found the child after hearing his cries, bundled him in a blanket and called 911, the Star Tribune reported.
“I thought I had lost you!” he cried, when he was finally reunited with his mother.
The boy explained to his mom that he survived by plugging his nose, taking a deep breath and praying, she told the Duluth News Tribune.
Kenny came away from the ordeal with a few deep cuts, bruises, and a concussion, according to the News Tribune, but doctors say his lungs are clear. He has few memories his journeys through the city’s sewers, telling the newspaper that it “was dark” and that it felt like he travelled “100 miles.”
“I hate that ride,” he added.
