Twenty-nine-year-old Lucia M. Mendoza struggled in the turbulent spillway water of Wright Patman Lake in Texarkana, Texas, after the car she was in left the road and entered the water and submerged on April 4, 2021. Mendoza exited the car, but was submerged multiple times as the current carried her toward open floodgates downstream. Dustin Wayne Roach, a 35-year-old construction worker of Ashdown, Arkansas, was fishing at the scene and dived in the water after seeing the woman bobbing in the water. He swam about 50 feet to her, grasped her and swam her toward the bank of the lake. Reaching a point about 40 feet from the bank, Roach struggled to catch his breath and spit up water that he had ingested. Others on the bank threw them a fishing line, which he secured around his torso. Still holding to Mendoza, he swam the rest of the distance to the bank while those on land pulled them to safety.
91685-10316