A brave girl from Daytona Beach, Florida leaped off a pier to save an 8-year-old boy.
19-year-old Hanna Pignato a waitress at Joe’s Crab Shack, a beach restaurant, watched in horror on April 13, when a little boy got caught in a rip current which could have been fatal.
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She did not waste any time but straight away jumped in, but here it was not a normal surf she was jumping into, but a plunge of 20 feet with really shallow water.
“Right when I jumped, I was like, ‘I’m done,’” she said. “Right when I hit the bottom floor, it was maybe two feet, three feet.”
She ended up striking a sandbar, which ended in broken bones in her feet and lower back. But thankfully, another Good Samaritan reached the child before her, and straight away took the child to hospital.
Pignato ended up needing someone to rescue her, “I was just thinking that could be my little sister I would hope someone would save,” Pignato said, “So I jumped.”
The only thing she regrets is that she didn’t judge the depth of the water correctly. “I should have walked down the pier a little bit more and done it so much better,” she said.
She says she was moved by the look of terror in the boy’s mother’s eyes, “She was screaming, and I was scared,” Pignato said. “I know what it’s like not to have my family. I did not want her to go through that. I’m just happy and grateful.”