Local athlete helps save accident victims

Published 9:48 am Monday, September 12, 2016

TIFTON, Ga. – A local athlete is credited with helping to save the life of a father and son involved in a vehicular accident on the morning of Sept 7.

Logan Carswell, a senior at Tiftarea Academy and quarterback for the Panthers football team, came upon the accident while heading back to school. He left his backpack at home that morning, and had needed to leave school to get it, which is why he was driving along Georgia Highway 32 that morning.

The accident involved a Toyota pickup traveling west on Highway 32. It was a single-vehicle accident involving the driver, an adult male, and his 7-year-old son. The truck veered off the road the right, plunged down a steep embankment, and struck several downed trees, causing the vehicle to rotate and vault, coming to a stop after it had flipped on its roof, becoming submerged in 3 to 4 feet of water.

Carswell said he was driving back to school at around 8 a.m when he noticed several cars pulled off on the shoulder and stopped to make sure everything was OK. A distraught onlooker told him about the accident and that there were people in the overturned vehicle, but no one had come out. Carswell and another passerby, John Clement of Fitzgerald, dove into the water, cut the child out of his seatbelt and carried him to the bank. Another onlooker started CPR until EMTs arrived on the scene. They then rescued the driver, who Carswell said was conscious but very confused. The driver initially told Carswell there were three children in the car, and Carswell dove back into the water to attempt to locate and rescue any additional victims. Once the driver was more responsive, he said there was only one child in the vehicle.

The child is reportedly in critical but stable condition, and both he and the father were airlifted from Tift Regional Medical Center to Macon. The child is in the Pediatric Intensive Care Unit with head injuries, and the father is on a ventilator in ICU. An officer on the scene said that, in his opinion, had the passersby not acted when and how they did, there would have been fatalities.

Carswell said he must have “left his book bag at home for a reason.” He added that he doesn’t think what he did should be focused on.

“We need to be praying for them,” he said.

Georgia State Patrol investigators say there is currently no known cause of the accident, but the driver was not speeding, and neither drugs nor alcohol appear to be involved.