It was an ordinary spring day in Florida.
Tim Tesseneer was driving on Daytona Beach with his family when he suddenly saw something strange.
A minivan was heading straight for the ocean.
Tim’s wife grabbed her camera to film the unusual moment.
Then seconds later, a desperate cry for help rang out.
The cry seemed to come from a young child.
So without hesitation, Tim jumped out of his car and ran towards the bus.
But he could not expect what he would find there.
There were two children in the backseat and they were screaming for help. “Help us! Help us! Our mother is trying to kill us!” they cried.
Their mother was at the wheel and it was clear that she was not herself.
“She looked at us with a vacant, dead stare. I use the word ‘possessed’. I don’t like using that word, but that’s what it seemed like,” Tim told ABC News.
By that time, another passerby helped Tim to talk to the mother and get the children out of the car.
Finally, they managed to get an arm through a window and open the door.
From the road, onlookers saw the men carrying two children out of the car.
But as the minibus kept going deeper into the ocean, Tim knew something the others did not: there was still a baby in the backseat of the car.
Rescuers soon arrived.
At the same time, the mother calmly got out of the car as her minibus sank into the sea with the baby still inside.
Fortunately, a rescuer managed to get into the car and save the baby – just in time.
A second later, a large wave submerged the minibus entirely.
It turned out that the mother, who was also pregnant, had been in an institution at that time but had escaped on her own.
Her sister had taken away her keys so she couldn’t go anywhere and called the police to warn them about her condition. But the police did not have the authority to do anything and the woman managed to get the keys back.
And so she drove her minibus straight into the ocean with her three children in the backseat.
If Tim and the other heroes hadn’t seen that something was wrong and immediately taken action, the story could have ended differently.
After the incident, the children were placed in foster care while the mother underwent a psychiatric evaluation.
Later that year, it was determined that the mother had suffered a mental breakdown but was no longer a danger to her children.
Watch the dramatic rescue here:
We are so glad that these heroes acted immediately to save these poor children.
Share if you also think these heroes should be honored for their courageous behavior!
