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Boaters rescue man who jumped into bay to save child after crash on a Maryland bridge



This photo provided by the Ocean City Fire Department shows the wreckage from a car accident on the Maryland Route 90 bridge in Ocean City. (AP)

By Dana Hedgpeth
May 5, 2021 at 9:39 a.m. EDT

Joe Oertel, 51, was on a pontoon boat with his family on Sunday in the Assawoman Bay near Ocean City when his daughter called out to him. ... “There’s something in the water over there,’” he recalled ­Alayna, 14, saying as they edged closer.

They came upon a man in the water holding a 2-year-old girl in his arms. He had jumped at least 25 feet from a Maryland Route 90 highway bridge to save the girl after she had been ejected from a pickup truck while in her car seat, landing in the water.

The man had been a couple of vehicles back, saw what happened and jumped into the bay to rescue the child, fire department officials said.

[Rescuer jumps into water to save child after crashes, Ocean City fire official says]

Oertel said Tuesday that at the time, he and his family didn’t know what had happened on the bridge — not realizing that moments earlier, the child had been in a truck on the highway above and was now being rescued. The Oertels had been in their boat on the south side of the bridge and the crash had happened on the north side.

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Dana Hedgpeth Follow https://twitter.com/postmetrogirl
Dana Hedgpeth is a Washington Post reporter, working in the early morning to report on traffic, crime and other local issues. She joined The Post in 1999.