Mom thankful son is alive, unhurt after pond rescue
Four-year-old Julian Holland nearly drowned Saturday in the frozen pond in the yard behind his grandparents' home in unincorporated Kane County near West Dundee.
It was only through the efforts of his mother, Angela Cassidy, who swam to his aid, that Holland was able to emerge unscathed by frostbite or hypothermia or any physical injuries.
His mother can't claim the same, sporting two staples in her head for her efforts.
But Cassidy doesn't consider her actions heroic. Physically she may have saved him, but she feels the hand of destiny played a pivotal role.
“Obviously, I feel like God is always the hero,” she said. “I could have dove in two minutes too late, and then I wouldn't have been a hero,”
The incident occurred at about 3:30 p.m. Saturday at the home onWoodcrest Lane.
It was a family gathering that included siblings and nieces and nephews.
All boded well for a normal day, with the children playing out in front, while she and her niece, 16-year-old Laura Shoufer, were in the kitchen,
Then, she said, “We heard a noise out back. We heard kind of like a scream out back.”
Her niece opened the door and looked out, only to see that somebody had fallen into the pond through the ice.
“As soon as she said that, I bolted out the front door and ran down to the deck that's near the pond,” she said.
Angela later found out that Julian had been playing in front of the house with another cousin his age, but the two wound up wandering to a pond in back of the house.
“He said it would be cool to stand on the ice,” Angela said.
When she saw somebody was in the pond, Angela said,
“My first reaction was to jump in and get to the other side as soon as I could.”
It was after she had jumped in that she realized the victim was her son.
Angela had to break the ice before she could reach her boy.
“There was some unbroken ice in between (us) still, so I just kind of started pounding and swimming as fast as I could towards him.”
Once she reached him, her father, Wesley Cassidy, and her sister, Carisa Shoufer, were there to take the boy.
Angela said her sister helped pull her out.
“My other daughter had to help her come out of the pond because her body was so frozen from being in the water,” Jane Cassidy said. Jane said her daughter could hardly move, and Carisa had to drag Angela into the house.
Angela said that at the time, “We weren't sure if there was anybody still there.
“I was in kind of a state of hysteria. I was screaming out, ‘Who else is in there?'”
Angela said she was sobbing hysterically and was shaken up.
When she went back into the house, she said, “I didn't even realize that I had pretty much cracked my skull a little bit. There was blood all over the place. My daughter (6-year-old Heidi) saw me and she kind of freaked out because she was scared of the blood. My mom had already called the ambulance.”
She said she remembers heading downstairs to remove change into dry clothes so she could ride with her son in the ambulance.
While in the ambulance, she remembers the paramedic saying that his blood-oxygen level was at 100-percent saturation.
“He was holding himself up by the ice when I was on my way to get him. So I knew that he was doing the best that he could to stay above water,” she said.
As the ambulance headed toward Sherman Hospital, Angela's head was bleeding profusely. The paramedic advised her to get herself checked out.
“When I got the ER, I didn't realize the severity of it,” she said.
It turned out that Julian's vital signs were good. At the hospital, they worked to raise his core temperature, and by the time he left the hospital, he was jumping around and was his usual rambunctious self.
But when the pain in her head became more insistent, “I realized that the gash was a lot bigger than I originally thought.”
After she underwent tests, two staples were inserted into her head.
Both Julian's mom and his grandmother, Jane Cassidy, are thankful that tragedy was averted.
“I feel very thankful that God spared my grandson and Angela was able to dive in and not get too seriously hurt and get him out,” Jane said.
“We told the kids a hundred times, ‘Don't go by the pond. Don't by the pond.'”
Luckily, Julian is “100 percent,” Angela said.
“He said he is not going to go by the pond anymore,” Angela said. “And he doesn't think it's cool anymore.”
“Now he knows why I told him not to go by the pond all these times,” she said.
“I'm kind of wiped out. I think the emotional trauma is more tolling than the physical effects of the bruises and bangs,” she said. She is also trying to avoid thinking about the what-ifs.
“We're so thankful to God for having such a great outcome. It could have been a lot worse. Even a couple more seconds could have made the difference. God saved Julian and he gave me the strength to get out there fast and go for it. We're just all really thankful that nothing else happened.”