The father of a 10-year-old rescued from pounding surf off the California coast in a dramatic scene captured on video says he is beyond grateful to the teenage lifeguard who saved his son.“He ran into that water despite those conditions that are deadly. You have 10 foot waves; you have riptides and currents coming in,” Sumit Rai told The Associated Press on Wednesday. “It is not safe for him to go into that water. So he’s risking his own safety.”Rai’s son Nathaniel was standing in shallow water when he was pulled into the ocean Saturday by powerful swells that suddenly came ashore at Seabright Beach in Santa Cruz, about 60 miles (about 100 kilometers) down the coast from San Francisco. Rai, who was in his home city of Dallas, said he heard about what happened when his kids called him that night.“My son told me that he drowned and my son told me that he went unconscious,” he said. “He was very subdued, still in a state of shock.”
By the next morning, Rai had watched the video of the rescue that has since caught the attention of President Donald Trump. Ryder Williams, 16, the lifeguard who saved Nathaniel, said he saw the boy lose his footing in ankle-deep water. He radioed in and then raced toward Nathaniel.“After the first wave, I was unable to pull him out because he was limp and the waves were pushing so hard,” he said in a statement.
