Hometown Hero | Krew Webb and Luke Saunders

A couple of youngsters are being recognized as our latest Hometown Heroes for their heroics in helping save a little girl from drowning.
Published: Mar. 3, 2023 at 5:45 PM EST

CHESAPEAKE, Ohio (WSAZ) - A couple of youngsters are being recognized as our latest Hometown Heroes for their heroics in helping save a little girl from drowning.

Krew Webb, Luke Saunders, and their parents went to Columbus for an all-star basketball tournament on Saturday, Feb. 25.

Around 10 p.m. that night, the boys were swimming in their hotel pool.

Krew’s mother Shelby Webb says a girl who looked like she was 3 years old was also in the pool on a life preserver float. She was with older siblings, but no adults from that family were in or around the pool, and there was no lifeguard.

Luke says he noticed the little girl struggling under water.

“I looked over and saw her drowning,” Luke, a Chesapeake Elementary first-grader, said.

Luke alerted Krew to the girl being in trouble.

The boys’ mothers were talking with each other by the pool and hadn’t noticed.

Krew, who’s in second grade, didn’t hesitate to grab the little girl and pull her out to safety.

“I went over there and picked her up, and I took her out of the water,” Krew said.

“I look up,” Shelby said, “and my son Krew is yelling my name and holding one of the girls, who is probably 30 pounds.”

“She was like puking, like water puke and stuff, and it was gross,” Luke said.

“She was profusely vomiting,” Shelby said. “It was clear she had aspirated on water.”

“Drowning can happen so fast,” Luke’s mother, Jamie Saunders, said. “It wasn’t loud. There wasn’t splashing. It wasn’t noisy. No one was yelling. I’m just super grateful our boys were there in that time to help.”

“It’s a lesson, even for us,” Shelby said. “There are kids sometimes in pools who don’t know how to swim who aren’t our children that we need to be more aware of. Where I feel like I kind of dropped the ball, maybe we dropped the ball as parents, our 7-year-olds stepped up.”

“They knew how to react on their own without any prompting,” Jamie said.

“They’re both golden-hearted little boys,” Shelby said.

Shelby says after the incident at the pool, they made sure the little girl and her sisters got up to the floor of the hotel their guardian was on.

For previous coverage:

Boys help save girl from drowning in hotel pool