There’s never a cop around when you need one!” That is, of course, unless you happen to drive your SUV into the drink and need an off-duty cop to swim to your underwater rescue. A Suffolk County, NY police officer and an emergency medical technician recently teamed up to save a man from a submerged sport utility vehicle in Cold Spring Harbor in that exact situation.

Suffolk P.D. Sgt. Kevin McKeon said Scott Kitograd, an advanced emergency medical technician, spotted the sunken SUV, which had a trailer and a boat attached, and called 911.

By the time Second Precinct Officer Tim Tonkin arrived, a woman ran up screaming that a man in the SUV was drowning. Tonkin braved freezing water and swam about 60 feet to the spot where the vehicle had gone under.

He managed to climb into the submerged vehicle while Kitograd hopped into a rowboat and paddled out. McKeon said Tonkin broke a window of the SUV with an extendible baton, and the two heroes were then able to extract James Leone Jr., 35, of Cold Spring Harbor, from the SUV.

“He must have been in the water at least five or six minutes. Both rescuers received hand cuts from the broken glass,” Sgt. McKeon told reporters after everyone was safe and dry.

“He was a big man and when they were pulling him out of the vehicle the weight of his torso slammed the cop’s face into the side of the SUV and he broke a tooth,” the Sgt. continued.

As to how Leone ended up in the water, McKeon said, “I don’t think we’re going to be able to figure it out. It was perhaps a medical condition.” He said there was no evidence of alcohol use.

“He said he blacked out and he couldn’t explain what happened to him. All of a sudden he just woke up and he was neck high in water in his vehicle,” the Sergeant told local reporters from New York Newsday.

“Tonkin is a swimmer and in amazing physical shape so it was lucky that he was there,” McKeon added.

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VP Banking
written by b, September 28, 2011

What shame the reporting misses the facts and is complete non-sense the real and true story is actually quite interesting, probably due to divine intervention or something and the reason why this man is alive today.

Feel free to call e to discuss the real facts, 516-286-9312

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