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By John McDonald
For a couple of heroes, Matthew Jackson and Tyler Lockerby are pretty casual, but that might be because the two young Kelowna men, who rescued a four people from a minivan that had plunged into a mountain lake, are just 19 years old.
In fact, Lockerby celebrated his 19th birthday the same day he and his lifelong friend jumped into Griffin Lake, right beside the Trans-Canada Highway, 30 kilometres west of Revelstoke.
“Yeah, I was just thinking about how I was going to celebrate when it happened,” recalled Lockerby, who was on his way to Revelstoke to do some work on the local arena for his father’s industrial refrigeration business.
“It’s kind of a blur, really,” said Jackson. “We were driving behind them, and we saw them hit the meridian, then they flipped down the embankment and rolled into the water.”
Jackson said the two didn’t even think about it before jumping into the the frigid mountain lake, where the minivan sat submerged in about eight feet of water.
“I went under and saw an arm and pulled on it,” he said. “We pulled two ladies out, then a man. We asked them if there was anyone else and they said there was another one in the van.”
The boys jumped back in to the water and tried to open one of the van’s doors and then looked through the front windshield.
“All the windows were smashed in from rolling, so we saw her and pulled her out,” Jackson said. “They were underwater for no more than 45 seconds.”
The two young men, now aided by other drivers who stopped to help, tried to stabilize the injured people on the steep banks of the lake, where they waited almost 30 minutes for emergency personnel to arrive. “We didn’t want them to move in case they had neck injuries,” he added.
Kelowna.com reached Lockerby and Jackson at their hotel in Revelstoke where they were fielding calls from media as far away as Toronto, all interested in their heroic exploits.
The two young men, friends since the age of two, had just returned from the local hospital where they had
visited two of the victims of the accident. “They were crying,” said Lockerby. “We tried to cheer them up and talked to them for a bit. One of them was going to visit her parents who was in a different hospital in Kamloops.”
According to Lockerby’s father, Norman, selfless action during an emergency situation comes a bit naturally to his son.
Three years ago, Norman and Tyler were out snowmobiling when they came across two men who had crashed their sled into their own truck.
Father and son jumped into action and got the two injured men out of the woods to medical care.
“One guy almost died,” recalled Norman. “He would have died if we hadn’t got them off the hill.”
In an interview Tuesday morning, Revelstoke RCMP Staff Sgt. Jacquie Olsen praised the Kelowna men.
“We’re definitely crediting them (for) their quick actions, because there’s no doubt in our mind from the information that we have on hand at this time that they probably saved some lives,” she said.
Police have not released the names of the four occupants of the Dodge Caravan, other than to say they were all from Calgary and are in stable condition in hospital.
john@kelowna.com/(250)575-0521
2 Responses to “Update: Young Kelowna hero has incredible birthday story”
Tags: rescue
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Thats my Brother!!!!!!!
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It is so refreshing to hear good news .. for a change.
Bravo Matthew Jackson and Tyler Lockerby !
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