| The boy riding
the jet ski toward the Bordentown City docks caught Fred Bernhardt's
attention. He was coming in too fast, ignoring the "no wake"
zone. Bernhardt watched the youngster recklessly waving his hands
in the air, skipping along the Delaware River. It bothered Bernhardt
that the kid was blasting the other boaters with swells of water.
The thought of it certainly didn't spoil his lunch, but it marred
an otherwise pleasant day while he and his inmate labor detail took
a break from the sun. But he looked again as the boy gunned the
craft toward the docks. He was still gesturing wildly, his expression
was rigid with fear. Most telling of all, there was blood on his
face.
And then he screamed: "I think my dad is dead!"
According to published reports, the 13-year-old boy and his father,
37-year-old Daniel King, of Browns Mills in Pemberton Township,
were riding their watercraft alongside each other on the river
near noon on July 9. For reasons as yet unknown, King's craft
suddenly veered in front of his son's, and the child unavoidably
collided with his father. The collision left King face down in
the river, floating away from his craft.
Ignoring lost teeth and a broken nose, the boy raced to find
help. He found it in Senior Correction Officer Fred Bernhardt,
who was relaxing by the scenic docks with his inmate detail. Bernhardt,
an officer of the Albert C. Wagner Youth Correctional Facility
in Bordentown and a former member of a Trenton rescue squad, was
quick to act. It was in his training.
"There was another detail there eating lunch at the same
time," he said. "So there were plenty of officers to
watch the inmates."
He checked the inmates. His partner and other officers on the
scene agreed to pick up the slack in his absence.
"I saw that nobody was doing anything, so I put it in my
mind to take charge," said Bernhardt, who noticed a civilian's
craft was nearby, preparing to launch. "He was getting ready
to go in, checking his boat out. I said, 'Look, we got a guy in
the water. Can you take us out there to get him out?' He said
sure."
With the boy leading them, they spotted King floating downriver.
Bernhardt's heart sank. The man wasn't flailing in the water.
He didn't cry out for help. He was face down and motionless.
"We pulled him out," Bernhardt said. "He had facial
injuries, his eyes were dilated, of course no pulse, no breathing.
I gave him a quick couple of breaths, started CPR, and he was
loaded with water."
You feel it when you try to blow life into a man who is waterlogged.
The resistance is tremendous. Bernhardt knew this, and water spilled
from King's lips as Bernhardt pressed on his chest … Twelve,
13, 14, 15, breathe. No air getting in. Water coming out. But
the boy was in the boat. Training and sympathy forced Bernhardt
to go on. One, two, three…
Just minutes later, as Bernhardt pulled in dockside, local police
arrived. Bernhardt continued to work on King until police took
over and connected King to a cardiac monitor, looking for a pulse
that had already left him. Police and the emergency crew hustled
King into an ambulance, working to pump life back into him. They
took the 13-year-old boy along to dress the wounds to his face.
Bernhardt imagined the man's life still hung in the balance as
the ambulance pulled away toward Robert Wood Johnson Hospital.
The boy's life hung in the balance, too, though not in the same
way. Grief and guilt awaited him, unless his father miraculously
coughed and sputtered, sat up and laughed at what a close call
it had been.
Bernhardt didn't find out until he got home from his moonlighting
job late that night that Daniel King was pronounced dead at 12:40
p.m. Bernhardt didn't sleep well.
"I didn't give up," he said. "Cops didn't give
up. But he was out there so long. Five to seven minutes underwater
is a lot. I tried to save the guy. I just wish I could have done
more for him.
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