Albert Evans

Albert Evans saved Aria Briggs, Evangeline Fountain and Keeley Bailey from drowning, Merryville, Louisiana, August 26, 2022. Around sunset, Briggs, 27, was holding onto her 6-year-old daughter, Evangeline, in the strong current of the Sabine River as they were among six people in their group that had been carried downstream near a beach. Briggs’s partner held onto his own daughter, Keeley, 7, while the partner’s friend had grasped Briggs’s 4-year-old son. Alerted by calls for help from the wife of a 57-year-old man, who had entered the river to try to save Keeley and Briggs’s partner, Evans, a 49-year-old heater technician who had been camping with his wife near the scene, went down the beach to the water’s edge. By then, the three men and Briggs’s son no longer were in sight, but Evans saw Briggs and Evangeline. Evans removed his boots and swam out to them, arriving at a place where he could not touch the river’s bottom. With difficulty, Evans swam back toward the beach, pulling and pushing Briggs to try to keep her above the surface as she held Evangeline until Evans’s wife approached in knee-deep water to help Evangeline and Briggs to land. Evans then saw Keeley, who had grasped onto an exposed branch on the opposite side of the river. While Evans exited the river, his wife retrieved their two-seat float, which was attached to sandbags. Using the float, Evans re-entered the river and swam to Keeley, who had moved further downriver, whom he placed atop the float, then towed back to safety on the beach. Briggs, Evangeline, Keeley, and Evans were not injured. First-responders searched the scene into the darkness that night without finding any of the missing four. Search crews eventually found the 57-year-old man the next day, Briggs’s partner and his friend two days after, and Briggs’s son three days after he submerged. All had drowned.