Even in Alabama, late March is early in the year for fishing, but this was 31-year-old Caleb Bennett’s third outing of the season. It was midmorning on Good Friday, March 29, 2024, when he loaded his 10-foot kayak into his pickup and drove, fittingly enough, to where Easter Ferry Road crosses the Elk River, about 25 minutes from his home in Athens, Alabama.
His was the only vehicle parked at the out-of-the-way boat launch, a simple clearing surrounded by empty woods. From the concrete boat ramp jutting out of the steep riverbank downstream from the parking area, it was a clear view 100 feet upstream to the bridge over the river.
Bennett had the day off work from his job as a warehouse manager and distribution dispatcher for an industrial supply company. His plan was to cruise upstream past the bridge until he found a creek mouth, fish it for bass, catfish or crappie for a couple of hours, then hurry home to catch his 4-year-old daughter’s T-ball game that afternoon.
The water temperature was just over 50 degrees, and the day was sunny, in the mid-60s. That was a nice change after the rainy weather the week before, which had swollen the river and amplified its current, visible against the opposite bank some 160 feet away. On the shore, Bennett loaded the kayak with three rods and reels, bait, a tackle box and a fish finder. At the stern, he attached a small trolling motor.
Something was missing, though—he’d forgotten his outriggers at home. Normally he’d fasten them, pontoon-like, on either side of the little kayak to improve its stability. He looked out at the muddy river. Its surface was smooth, but sticks and leaves rushed past in the current. He’d have to be extra careful.
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Getting into trouble on the water
A burly man standing 6 foot 3 and weighing more than 240 pounds, Bennett eased himself into the boat, started the motor and pushed off, angling upriver toward the far bank, which was less obstructed by overhanging branches and debris. He’d gotten most of the way across when a confusion of currents—probably caused by the supports of the bridge—began spinning him around.
Uh-oh, he thought. This is probably not a good idea. Working the tiller, he pulled the kayak out of its spin and nosed it upriver. But almost immediately, it fell into another spin.
OK, this is definitely not a good idea. Let’s head back.
He pointed the kayak back toward the boat launch, but a crosscurrent broadsided him, and the little craft flipped. One second, he’d been sitting upright; the next, he was submerged in the shockingly cold, steadily moving water.
For 40-year-old John Reinhardt to have ended up at that same spot on the Elk River that morning is what believers might call a miracle and skeptics might call a fluke. He was spending the Easter break camping with his four kids, along with his sister Pattie Smith and her four children, on family land about 11 miles outside Athens.
His own kids, who ranged in age from 3 to 13, had surprised him by asking if they could go fishing during their camping week. Reinhardt couldn’t remember the last time he’d fished, but he had agreed and bought some gear. There were plenty of good spots closer to their land, but Reinhardt, without being able to articulate why, decided they’d fish near the Elk River’s Easter Ferry Road bridge.
While Smith and her kids went to collect some more gear, Reinhardt and his children pulled into the parking area around 11:30 a.m. The kids were chattering excitedly while Reinhardt parked and turned off the engine. As he stepped out of the truck, a loud gunshot rang out, alarmingly close by. He ducked back into the truck and retrieved his pistol from its locked case under the driver’s seat.
“I want you kids to stay here,” he said. “I’m going to see what’s going on.” Even as he spoke, a second shot shattered the peace of the still day. Gun in hand, Reinhardt stalked toward the far edge of the clearing, scanning it closely as he went. What was this? Someone “plinking” (casual target shooting)? Or was it something more serious, like a shoot-out? Or …
A third ringing shot cemented in his mind the other possibility: These were distress shots. “Hello?” he called out. From the river, he heard a faint “hello” in reply. “Are you good or not good?” he yelled. “Not good,” came the answer. Reinhardt ran toward the riverbank.
Running out of time
Things had gone from bad to worse for Bennett. When he’d fallen into the river, the frigid water had taken his breath away, jangling every nerve. Surfacing, he saw the kayak drifting beside him, belly-up. He tried to swim for it, but his clothing had become instantly waterlogged, and his rubber boots had filled with water. His life jacket, buoyed by the water, jammed up against his throat, choking off his breath.
Swallowing back panic, he kicked off his boots and swam toward the boat. If I can climb back up in there …
Kicking hard, he threw his arms over the hull and clutched at the submerged decking on the other side. Then he leaned back to flip the kayak—it didn’t budge. He tried a few times, but the boat seemed impossible to turn over.
Bennett knew he was wasting his time and energy while the current tugged him inexorably along. He needed to get back to land, but he’d never be able to climb up the steep banks of the near shore. His only hope was the boat ramp, some 145 feet back across the river. When he looked at his target, he realized with a jolt that he didn’t have much time—the current had already brought him dangerously far downstream. If it swept him past the ramp, there wasn’t another place to come ashore for miles, and he’d be overcome with exhaustion and hypothermia long before he got there.
He bid his kayak and gear farewell and began swimming furiously toward the boat ramp. The ill-fitting life jacket continued to choke him, hindering his breathing and his ability to swim. He unzipped it and tore it off, and the current snatched it from his grasp. Unencumbered but now in more danger than ever, he kept swimming. Eddies from the currents washed over him and filled his mouth with water. Already, the cold was stiffening his limbs.
Bennett looked up. There was no way he was going to make it to the ramp. But there in the water, some 25 feet from shore, was an overhanging branch from a large poplar tree growing right beside the ramp. If he could catch it, maybe he could pull himself to shore.
His hope renewed, he swam with everything he had. If I don’t make it to that branch, I could die here, he thought. Without a second to spare, he reached up and caught the branch just before the current swept him out of reach.
It was so slender—perhaps an inch in diameter—that he wondered whether it would snap. With his weight pulling on it, the end of the branch now lay in the water. Bennett pulled his elbows over it and found that he could rest with his legs trailing behind him in the current. But now what? Let go and swim the remaining 25 feet to shore? The current would carry him downriver away from the ramp. Climb up the branch? That, he realized, had been a wild fantasy, given his weakened state.
Then Bennett remembered: My phone! But when he reached into his pocket, he found that the phone was gone. As he checked his other pocket, his hand brushed against the Glock 21 pistol he always wore on his hip when he fished, in case of snakes or coyotes. Maybe he could signal for help.
He drew the pistol from its holster and held it in front of him. He had 13 rounds in the magazine. Shivering, he watched the bridge, waiting for a vehicle to show itself.
At last a car came into sight, and he fired three shots toward the opposite shore. The car didn’t stop. Minutes went by. Then another car, another three shots. No luck.
Bennett’s situation was growing desperate. He could scarcely feel his legs, and he could tell that his cognition was slowing. At last, another vehicle passed over the bridge. He fired once, twice—and then nothing. He ejected the dud round and fired a third shot. The car kept going. Three rounds left.
Another car droned by on the bridge. Bennett fired his final three shots and dropped the now-useless pistol into the river. But a second after his very last bullet hit the opposite shore, he heard a voice. “Hello?”
“How are you feeling?” Reinhardt called to Bennett. “Freezing cold,” Bennett said. “Man, I’m barely able to hold on.”
“I’m going to get you out of there,” Reinhardt said. “Hold on.” Bennett could not have picked a better rescuer than John Reinhardt. These days, Reinhardt worked as an information technology project manager and volunteered as a youth pastor, but he had fought in Afghanistan in the U.S. Army infantry, had received training in combat water survival and combat trauma, and had been a certified lifeguard back in high school. As a disaster-recovery volunteer, he’d pulled people out of car wrecks, set bones and rescued puppies. He saw his skills and experiences as a responsibility to help others.
Devising a plan
Reinhardt ran back to his truck. “There’s somebody in the water who needs help,” he told his kids. “I’m going to have to get into the water.” He turned to his eldest, 13-year-old Maelie. “I’m going to need you to help me,” he told her. He instructed 8-year-old Macie to stay in the vehicle and look after her younger two siblings, ages 4 and 3.
He knew it was only a matter of time before the exhausted Bennett lost his grip on the branch and was carried away by the current. If only he’d brought a rope along, he could have thrown it out to Bennett and hauled him ashore.
Unfortunately, he didn’t have all his usual emergency equipment with him, as he’d recently bought this truck and hadn’t yet transferred over all his gear.
He and Maelie scrounged for any kind of rope in their vehicle and Bennett’s. All they came up with was a 6-foot ratchet strap, an oversized trash bag and a roll of duct tape. With the bag and the duct tape, Reinhardt knew, they could improvise a flotation device that he could use. And Maelie could hang on to the ratchet strap in case he could use it later. He would have to get into the water and swim Bennett back to shore—a dreadful thought, considering how much Reinhardt despised cold water.
Still standing next to his truck, he called 911 and gave the dispatcher a “nine-line”—a terse, just-the-facts accounting of what was going on and what was needed. He explained that he’d be getting in the water, so the first responders should prepare for the possibility of two victims, not just one. The dispatcher had more questions, but Reinhardt cut in. “Hey, I need to get off the phone. I got to go help this guy.”
He hung up and handed the phone to Maelie. “Be ready to call 911 if anything happens to me,” he told her. They ran down to the water, where he swooped the trash bag through the air to inflate it, then taped it shut. With Maelie by his side, he said a quick prayer. “Give me a calm heart, God. Guide my actions. Protect him, and protect me.”
Embarking on a heroic rescue
The base of the tree that Bennett was clinging to stood just downstream of the boat ramp, leaning at a 45-degree angle over the water. Reinhardt stripped down to his underwear, climbed along the trunk above the current for a few feet, drew a breath and jumped into the water, holding the makeshift flotation device above his head.
Within seconds, he reached Bennett. “Here, hold on to this,” he gasped, passing Bennett the inflated trash bag. But Bennett couldn’t grasp the bag with his numb fingers, and it drifted off down the river. My fault, not his, Reinhardt thought. I made it too big to hold on to.
“It’s OK,” he said. “We’re going to swim to shore.”
“I don’t think I can use my legs,” Bennett managed to say. He’d been in the water for nearly an hour and was in the throes of Stage 2 hypothermia, with difficulty speaking and thinking, numbness and loss of motor function.
Bennett draped his arms over Reinhardt’s shoulders from behind, and they set out. Almost immediately, the current and Bennett’s weight pushed Reinhardt’s head underwater. He was a strong swimmer, but his 5-foot-9 frame weighed only about 155 pounds, a good 90 pounds less than Bennett. He’d taken on a herculean task.
He swam with all his strength, angling toward the boat ramp, desperate to hit shore at the clearing, where they’d have a chance of making it up the bank, which was about 8 feet high. But it wasn’t working. Again and again, Reinhardt’s head went underwater and he had to fight to resurface, gasping and gagging. Long experience had taught him to tamp down panic, but now he could feel it coming over him. Oh, crap, Reinhardt thought, we’re both going down the river. He had nothing left in the tank—his muscles felt dead with fatigue.
So he said a silent prayer: God, I need your strength right now to help him. With a sudden burst of energy, he finished the upstream swim, coming to rest at the base of the tree, where a mass of its roots jutted out of the muddy bank.
The water was too deep to stand, so Reinhardt laid Bennett’s chest over a slick, muddy outcropping and guided his arms through loops formed by the tree’s roots. The two men lay there for a long moment, spent—vomiting from exertion and from swallowing water. Now, how to get Bennett up onto dry land?
Getting a critical assist
Within a couple of minutes, a deputy from the Limestone County Sheriff’s Office arrived and peered down over the bank. “What do you need?” he called. “Rope,” Reinhardt answered. “Do you have any?”
“I don’t.”
“Maelie,” Reinhardt said, “give him the ratchet strap.” The deputy came partway down the embankment and lowered the strap to Reinhardt, who used it to fashion a makeshift harness, passing it around Bennett’s chest and fastening it to his belt loop. By now, Bennett was slipping in and out of consciousness.
For 10 minutes, the deputy pulled from above while Reinhardt pushed from below. But the deputy couldn’t get any footing on the steep, muddy embankment, and Reinhardt, barefoot and in his underwear, had nothing to stand on. He’d been in the water for at least 20 minutes and was in the early stages of hypothermia himself—shivering and going numb in his extremities.
At last, a volunteer firefighter showed up with a 20-foot rope. He passed one end down to Reinhardt, who quickly tied it to the ratchet strap and then scrambled up the bank. The three of them, standing on dry ground, pulled, but Bennett kept slipping back down the bank, his limbs and clothing snagging in the roots. “Hold on,” Reinhardt said.
He climbed back down the bank and slid, again, into the frigid water. He set his right shoulder under Bennett’s butt, dug his hands and feet into the muddy bank, and called out, “One, two, three, lift!” With all his strength, he pushed up while the firefighter and deputy pulled on the rope. Bennett’s nearly lifeless body rose a few inches.
Reinhardt braced himself and called the cadence again. Inch by inch, using every ounce of their energy, the three men hauled Bennett up onto dry ground. He lay there, unable to move, scarcely able to speak.
Smith had arrived with the gear, and when she saw her brother shivering in his boxers, covered in mud and exhausted, her mouth dropped open. “Just another day in the life of John Reinhardt,” he quipped.
Moments later, the EMS arrived, loaded Bennett onto a stretcher and took him to Athens-Limestone Hospital. His core temperature had dropped into the low 80s, near the threshold of potentially deadly Stage 3 hypothermia. He later estimated he’d been in the water for nearly 90 minutes. He missed his daughter’s T-ball game, but by that evening, he was resting in his parents’ home with his little girl by his side. He was sore and exhausted, yet blessedly alive.
It wouldn’t be until almost bedtime that evening, huddled beside the campfire at his family’s campsite, that Reinhardt would really feel warm again. But for the moment, back at the Easter Ferry Boat Launch, he dried himself off, put his clothes back on—and unloaded the kids’ rods and reels from the truck. They’d come here to fish, after all.
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