Video: Dramatic Rescue at Sea, "You Can See the Terror in Their Eyes"
It seemed like a fun father and son excursion for Joe and Tommy Azeredo, who just wanted to enjoy a bit of lobster fishing as summer came to a close. The beautiful weather with partly sunny skies added to what should have been an enjoyable and quiet day about eight miles off the New England coast.
Then disaster struck when lobster lines got wrapped around the engine of the boat. The water current dragged them toward the pathway of some rocks, which pierced the hull of the boat.
Tommy Azeredo was quick to grab their vessel’s radio.
“I called on the radio, I was like, ‘Mayday, mayday, we’re going down!’ As the boat was flipping, I heard, ‘We got you, we know where you are, we’re coming.'” Tommy told Inside Edition.
While Tommy’s life vest was lost in all of the confusion, his dad was able to put his on and secure it. As water rushed in to the sinking boat, Tommy turned and noticed their cooler.
“When I turned around, I see the cooler. From the miracle of God, the cooler was there at that moment,” Tommy recalled.
The two men used the cooler as a way to keep from sinking into the bitterly cold Boston Harbor water.
“Every minute felt like an hour,” Tommy said.
The Boston police rescue boat took about eight minutes to arrive on the scene.
By the time the police approached, the only part of the Azeredo’s boat still visible was a small piece of the bow. It was the blue cooler and the two men clinging to it that caught the officers’ attention. A police body camera captured the footage of the rescue, and the terror in the victim’s eyes.
Tommy can be heard insisting that they save his 76-year-old father first as 38-year-old Tommy continued to cling to a life preserver and grasp the edge of the police boat.
Both men were pulled to safety by the officers with only minor injuries.
