A New York teen and future Marine is being hailed a hero for saving a wayward driver's life after she accidentally drove her car into a Long Island bay late Tuesday night.
Anthony Zhongor, 17, was on the dock listening to music around 10 p.m. when he spotted a Subaru Outback on the dock driven by 18-year-old Mia Samolinski.
17-year-old Anthony Zhongor is being hailed a hero for jumping into a Long Island bay to save a woman who accidentally drove her car into the water. (Fox 5 New York)
Samolinski mistook her gas pedal for her brakes and accidentally plunged her vehicle into the Patchogue Bay.
Zhongor said he saw the car fly into the water, so he jumped into the freezing bay as other bystanders watched.
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The high school senior was able to pull the car's back door open in order to get Samolinski out and swim her to the platform before her vehicle sank. Samolinski was able to escape unscathed.
A Long Island teen heroically saved a driver's life after she accidentally drove into Patchogue Bay. (Village of Patchogue)
"The idea of dying never crossed my mind," Zhongor told Fox 5 New York. "I was supposed to be at the beach yesterday but I was here."
The woman's father Charles Samolinski met with Zhongor at the dock where it happened and thanked him for saving his daughter's life.
"I wasn’t sitting in the ER or morgue," Charles Samolinski told the station. "She’s here. A car can be replaced, my daughter… irreplaceable."
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Charles Samolinski, the father of the woman who drove into the water, meets with Anthony Zhongor to thank him for saving his daughter's life. (Fox 5 New York)
The driver and the rescuer went to the same high school but never met each other until Tuesday night.
Zhongor did not initially think much of his heroic act - he told Fox 5 New York that he went to McDonald's afterward, and that his family didn't know about it until they saw it on the local news.
Zhongor graduates from high school next week. He was recruited by the U.S. Marine Corps and is set to start boot camp training in September.
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"It shows that our training and mentorship has gone to the right place," Marines Staff Sgt. Christian Erazo told Fox 5 New York. "I’m happy he acted because it could’ve ended somewhere very differently."
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