Boy rescued from Chester County creek: I kept on sinking

WEST BRANDYWINE TWP., Pa. (WPVI) -- 12-year-old Miles Bryant was playing in the woods next to his home with his 9-year-old brother and a friend when the creek wall he was walking along collapsed, trapping him in the cold water.

"I really don't freak out, but it was scary for me," Miles said.

It happened around 5 p.m. Monday in the 200 block of Kingswood Lane in West Brandywine Township, Chester County.

Miles told Action News Tuesday, "I was walking along the creek and the creek gave out and I fell into the mud, and I kept on sinking."

PHOTOS: Boy rescued from mud in Chester County

His feet were stuck in the muck beneath the waist deep water. The boys tried for a while to free him, then ran to find his mother, Jackie.

"By the time I got there, he had one leg out and the other leg was just getting deeper," Jackie said.

Mom and then Miles' dad tried to dig him out. At 7:35 p.m. they called 911.

The initial first responders soon realized this was a complicated and risky rescue, so reinforcements were called in from across the county.

Wagontown Fire Co. Chief Todd Zeigler said, "We were fighting Mother Nature, basically, with the mud, the water. At one point, we tried to divert the creek down - and when we tried to do that, more water kept coming up below him."

"This guy, Luke, he was holding me the entire time. They had hot packs on me. They were flowing hot liquid through my body... through an IV," Miles recalled.

Finally, special equipment pumped air into the area surrounding Miles' stuck foot - the suction released, and he came free.

"I could hear cheers here in the woods," Jackie said.

The Bryants are so grateful for those rescuers who saved Miles' foot and quite possibly his life.

Miles had this message for his rescuers: "Thank you. I really would like to thank them. They really helped me."

Jackie expressed her thanks, as well.

"Just the way they literally embraced my son. They made him feel safe in a not safe situation," she said.

Miles was airlifted to Children's Hospital of Philadelphia. He was treated for mild hypothermia and released.

He is fine now - in fact, fine enough to play in his first baseball game of the season.