Seattle station KOMO News reports that a car crashed through the glass wall of a local LA Fitness pool this week, miraculously missing the three swimmers in the water at the time. The people in the pool area swam over to help, the report said, and managed to get the 69-year-old driver out of the car safely.
The incident happened on Monday morning at around 8am local time, KOMO News reports, when a man parked just outside of the building accidentally hit the gas while leaving the spot. It sent the car through the glass and into the pool, where it “quickly sank to the bottom,” KOMO News quoted a Seattle Fire Department official as saying. (Videos of the scene from KOMO News won’t embed, but they can be seen here.)
None of the swimmers were struck, the story said, and two swam over to help the driver out. Noah Schlenke, one of the rescuers who’s also a lifeguard, told KOMO News this:
Thankfully no one was trapped under the car so he and another swimmer moved quickly to help the driver, who was still sitting inside.
“So, we opened the door and we’re like, ‘hey you gotta get out, you gotta get out!’ And he just kind of looked at us and he still wasn’t quite understanding where he was. So, the guy I was with actually just came in and reached over and grabbed him and pulled him out,” Schlenke said.
The gym closed temporarily as the car was pulled out of the water but reopened later that day, the story said. As for the pool, an LA Fitness spokesperson told KOMO News that the gym will make sure the area is safe before opening it up again.
But the most jaw-dropping part of the story wasn’t how it happened in the first place, or the surprise heroes who saved the situation from being way worse than it could have been. It was this from KOMO News, emphasis ours:
We talked to a few gym members who say although it was somewhat inconvenient to not be able to work out, they’re just happy that everybody got out safely.
Maybe, just maybe, if a person crashes their vehicle into a gym pool by accident and has to be rescued from it as it sinks to the bottom, don’t start your public, verbal reaction sentence with, “Although it was somewhat inconvenient to not be able to work out.”
It was probably inconvenient for the man rescued from the sinking car in the pool, too. Just probably.