Neighbors pull man, dog from icy Charlotte pond

CHARLOTTE - The quick actions of some neighbors likely saved a man's life over the weekend.

Tom Kreh, 67, doesn't usually go ice fishing on the pond in his subdivision, said his wife Kathy, but Saturday afternoon he made an exception.

He left their house in Sandstone Estates after 5 p.m. with the couple's English Setter Nellie and walked to the 38-acre pond nearby.

What happened next was luck or divine intervention.

Todd Holzhausen just happened to glance out the window of his cousin's house at the exact moment Kreh started walking out on the ice just after 5:30 p.m.

It was a life-saving glance.

Charlotte resident Jim Cicorelli was hosting a large family gathering at his house, one of about a dozen in the neighborhood that sits on the shore of the subdivision's pond.

He heard Holzhausen, his cousin, take note of Kreh, who was about 25 feet from shore on the other side of the water.

"He made a comment," Cicorelli said. "'Some guy's ice fishing.' Ten seconds later he's like, 'I think he just fell threw the ice.'"

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Within seconds Cicorelli's wife, Terri, had called 911 and he had dashed to the garage and grabbed a tow rope. He and several other relatives jumped in two vehicles and headed to the pond's shoreline where Kreh had disappeared.

"We were just about over there when I saw splashing in two different areas of the pond," Cicorelli said.

Nellie had broken through the ice too.

Cicorelli said the rope he'd grabbed was too short to reach Kreh, who was struggling to pull himself out of the water when they arrived.

"He didn't have enough energy," he said. "We could tell he was having a hard time breathing."

So the family looked along the shore for something they could use to get closer to him. There were a few fishing boats along the shore but they worried those wouldn't be stable enough to slide out on the ice.

Two of the men, Paolo DiLernia and Ron Bogart, settled on a plastic raft Cicorelli found. They climbed in and slid the raft out to Kreh, pulling him into it.

They pulled Nellie into the raft just as Charlotte firefighters and police officers arrived on the scene at 5:41 p.m.

"Thank God that was there," Cicorelli said, of the raft. "If that wasn't there I don't think it would have ended up the way it did."

Firefighters pulled the raft to shore with a line.

Kreh had been in the freezing water at least 10 minutes.

Jonny Fullerton, Charlotte's deputy fire chief, said the cold, iced-over water in the pond could have killed Kreh if he hadn't been rescued.

"The risk is hypothermia," he said. "Your body temperature is going to drop and when that drops it can send you into cardiac arrest."

Fullerton said Kreh was monitored by EMS on the scene. He was shivering but wasn't injured. Neither was Nellie.

He credited the quick actions of Cicorelli and his family with making a huge difference.

"In this case, they risked their lives to save him," Fullerton said. "Without them he could have been in the water another two to three minutes. He could have been injured a lot worse."

Kathy said she was shocked when Kreh came home soaking wet and accompanied by paramedics. Her husband was at work on Monday and unavailable to comment.

"He could have been killed," she said. "I am so grateful and I'm amazed that they saw him."

Contact Rachel Greco at (517) 528-2075 or rgreco@lsj.com. Follow her on Twitter @GrecoatLSJ.