PROVIDENCE, R.I. (WPRI) — Rodolfo Flores was taking a nap Monday afternoon when all of a sudden he awoke to people screaming outside.
Flores tells 12 News when he looked out the window of his Pleasant Valley Parkway home, he saw a car more that halfway submerged in the floodwaters.
The driver was still inside, according to Flores, and was struggling to escape through the window.
“I went running and jumped through the water to rescue the guy,” he recalled.
Flores said when he got there, a woman was trying to help the man out of the vehicle, but the window was only halfway rolled down.
“She was trying to help him but she couldn’t,” he continued. “So I broke the window and then the lady pulled him out.”
Flores was grateful he was there to help, especially since the driver didn’t speak English and the woman attempting to rescue him didn’t speak Spanish.
“He was very close to dying,” Flores said. “He was already [under] the water completely and the worst thing was that he didn’t know how to swim.”
Once the woman pulled him from the vehicle, Flores said several onlookers rushed to help the driver out of the water.
Thankfully, Flores said no one else was inside the car.
Neighbors tell 12 News the driver lost control of his vehicle while trying to navigate the flooded roadway.
While shaken up, Flores said the driver did not appear to be injured.
Flores, on the other hand, wasn’t so lucky.
When he broke the window, Flores said he suffered several cuts to his arm.
“I broke the window because that was the only way to help the guy,” Flores said. “We did the best we could to save this guy’s life.”
It took crews a couple of hours to remove the submerged vehicle and for the floodwaters to recede.
Pleasant Valley Parkway was one of several roadways that flooded in the capital city Monday afternoon. Traffic was also brought to a standstill on I-95 for more than three hours after flooding rendered the highway impassable near Exit 18 (Thurbers Avenue).
Ryan Welch contributed to this report.
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