by A golfer in the middle of his round at a Southern California Golf Association championship and an SCGA official jumped into a canal on Tuesday to extract a driver from a submerged car.
“I’ve never seen an incident like this,” said Jeff Ninnemann, director of championships and golf operations for the SCGA, who hopped into the Coachella branch of the All-American Canal that runs through Terra Lago Golf. 36-hole resort in Indio. , California. “I was sure when the water started to fill up and we couldn’t get that door open, I was sure it was going to end a lot worse.”
CalFire Battalion Chief Jorge Segura in Indio said sometime before 10:30 a.m., a driver of a Nissan Pathfinder left the road near the Terra Lago clubhouse and drove through an empty lot filled with trees, piles of sand and rocks and even rocks. Tournament officials said they believe the driver had a seizure behind the wheel.
Without hitting anything in the course, the vehicle splashed into the channel between the greens on two holes, the ninth holes on the north and south courses, where golfers were playing in the SCGA Amateur Net Championship. This tournament includes 156 golfers from across Southern California. The water surface is about six feet below the embankment and only the roof of the car was still above the water as it lay at the bottom of the channel.
Ninnemann was on the first tee of one of the courses as a starter when the incident occurred.
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“We got a call on the radio, it sounded like a cart with a ‘t’ had entered the channel,” Ninnemann said. “So our immediate reaction was that someone needed to check what happened and if there is a person who is in the channel we may have to call 911 if they have indeed been injured. I saw more and more people running here and then it became clear that it wasn’t a cart, it was a car.
When he arrived at the canal, Ninnemann found Simi Valley golfer Brett Fox already in the canal trying to open the car door.
“Fox is in the channel because the driver is in the car and they can’t open the door,” Ninnemann said. “Brett was calling for extra help. He said he needed help opening the door.
Ninnemann then jumped into the canal.
“We kept trying that driver side door and Fox told me to swim to the passenger side door because he thought the driver was trying to get out,” Ninnemann said. “The driver started to regain consciousness, but I don’t think he was fully functional. Fox thought he was trying to get out the passenger side, so I went to the passenger side. I was on that side and Fox ended up pushing him out the driver’s side window.
Someone on the bank of the canal threw a rope down, Ninnemann said, and the driver was pulled onto the concrete bank to safety. Ninnemann and Fox then used a nearby ladder in the concrete to crawl out of the channel.
“I’m still deeply shaken,” Ninnemann said. “This water is ice cold. And somehow Fox came out and he wanted to get back on tour. The guy is a hero today.
After being given time and changing clothes, Fox returned to his championship round. Fox declined to comment on the incident.
Segura said the driver was already on the bank of the canal when his CalFire team arrived. A total of a dozen CalFire and Indio police vehicles were at the scene.
“We are really lucky here in Indio that all of our equipment has paramedics and we also have our own ambulances,” Segura said. “We had a few of our firefighters and paramedics look at him and get him in and we got him to the (John F. Kennedy) hospital.”
The driver was listed in stable condition Tuesday afternoon.
Segura said he couldn’t comment on the driver’s possible seizure, but said the driver was lucky people were there to help.
“Luckily it was kind of a soft landing, and he’s fine,” Segura said. “And he was wearing a seat belt.”
This is the second incident of a vehicle entering the Terra Lago channel in 15 months. In January 2022, a maintenance vehicle fell into the channel about 200 meters from Monday’s incident. In this first incident, the vehicle overturned and ended up upside down in the canal, and the driver was trapped and drowned
