Woman in wheelchair calls man an ‘angel’ for rescuing her from a lake
Aug 8, 2023, 5:47 PM | Updated: 6:54 pm
STANSBURY PARK, Utah — Kelly Roundtree has lived in Stansbury Park long enough to know what things sound like.
Especially during the summer months when kids are taking a dip in the lake to cool off.
“Yeah, it’s nice here,” he said. “I have been here since 2005.”
It’s also why he knew when something just didn’t sound right.
“I wasn’t sure what it was. Actually, it didn’t sound like help at first, it sounded like kids playing,” Roundtree said.
However, when he heard that scream of panic and saw someone in the water across the lake from his house, he knew time was running out.
“It took me like 35 seconds, 40 seconds to get over there,” he said.
Roundtree jumped in his car and drove to the house directly across the lake from him because he knew it would be faster than taking his canoe.
Lisa Kingston is just happy he got there fast.
“When I looked up and I had seen him and I was like, oh my God,” she said with tears in her eyes.
Kingston was the woman in the water yelling for help.
When Roundtree got there, she knew she was going to be okay because he held her head out of the water.
That’s also when Roundtree understood why it was such an emergency.
“The wheelchair is on its side in the water and her face is like, she’s sideways buckled in. She can’t move,” he said.
Kingston had been in her backyard getting some sun in her powered wheelchair she needs after a car accident a few years ago.
For some reason, that wheelchair started sliding down the slope in her backyard toward the lake.
She couldn’t stop it.
When she got to the edge of her backyard, the wheelchair flipped into the water.
With limited use of her arms and legs, Kingston couldn’t get out.
“It was scary. It was so scary,” she said. “You don’t know what to think. Absolutely no idea.”
Fortunately, Roundtree knew what to do until paramedics got there to help.
They said he most likely saved her life.
“What Kelly did on that afternoon was heroic,” Jon Smith, who is with the North Tooele Fire District, said. “He will be the first guy to be humble and tell you he was just doing what everybody else would’ve done, but the fact of the matter is he was the right guy in the right place at the right time.”
Roundtree doesn’t like that word, hero.
“I don’t know about that,” he said.
So, Kingston came up with another one.
“I definitely have an angel,” she said. “Yeah. I mean, I have somebody who was right there.”
It was somebody who cared enough to help.
“I keep downplaying it because it doesn’t seem like there was any alternative,” Roundtree said. “I don’t think that is ever an option, right? Of not doing anything.”
Roundtree and Kingston haven’t met again since this happened last week, but they are planning on getting together soon.
“I can’t wait to talk to him,” said Kingston. “I wouldn’t be here without him.”
