Boy Scout training saves boy from drowning

By Melica Johnson KATU News and KATU.com Staff Published: Jul 30, 2010 at 10:00 PM PST
Boy Scout training saves boy from drowning »Play Video
Noah Martinez (facing camera) gives Matt Rolle a hug while Lane Davis looks on. Martinez and Davis, two Boy Scouts, saved Rolle from drowning along the Yamhill River.

SHERIDAN, Ore. - A 16-year-old McMinnville boy has a couple of Boy Scouts to thank for pulling his lifeless body out of the Yamhill River last week.

At a popular swimming hole, Matt Rolle said he became tired while in the water around 3 p.m. Friday, July 23.

“(I) kept breathing really heavily and then I went under once, and then came back up and went under one final time and everything went black,” he said.

At first the other teens at the river thought Rolle was joking around.

“Then I look into his face and his eyes were rolled back,” said 14-year-old Noah Disabatino, who helped save Rolle. “His face was pale white. His lips were purple. That’s when I realized it was getting serious.”

Disabatino called to his two friends, Lane Davis and Noah Martinez, both 16, for help.

Both Davis and Martinez are long-time Boy Scouts.

“I don’t think I was actually scared,” said Martinez. “Just kind of stressed out a little bit, because I felt responsible for him. I kind of felt a little guilty, because in the beginning I didn’t take it seriously.”

The boys knew how to safely pull Rolle’s waterlogged, lifeless body out of the current because of their Boy Scout training.

“It really taught us to grab it and swim out of it, holding the body,” said Martinez. “I have to thank the Boy Scouts for that.”

Once they got Rolle to shore they took turns performing CPR, their training coming back to them even under pressure.

“He had a lot of water in the back of his throat,” Martinez said. “He was barely breathing, but when he was breathing, he was gurgling it. So we put him on his side and it kind of just drained out.”

For three minutes Martinez and Davis took turns pumping Rolle’s chest and breathing into his mouth until paramedics arrived.

Davis said that at no point did he think Rolle wasn’t going to make it.

“It’s just not my mentality,” he said. “I think, ‘OK, I’m going to keep doing this until they say he’s gone.’”

“I think it was a really great thing they did,” Rolle said. “I really owe it to them. I have to save them someday when it comes down to it.”

According to the assistant fire chief in Sheridan, Rolle would not be alive today had those Boy Scouts not pulled him from the water and successfully performed CPR.