Michael Byers

Michael Byers helped save a boy from drowning, Huntersville, North Carolina, October 3, 2020. A 2-year-old boy entered the swift-flowing Catawba River from a partially submerged boat ramp downstream of a hydroelectric dam. A man accompanying the boy’s mother at the scene entered the water and grasped the boy but struggled to swim. Alerted by the mother’s shouts for help while fishing near the ramp, Byers, 65, retired business operator, jumped fully clothed from the ramp into the river and swam to the man and the boy, whose arm he grasped. Swimming against the swift current, Byers towed the boy back to the boat ramp, where the boy safely exited the water. Nearly exhausted, Byers ultimately exited the river there, too. The boy was treated overnight at a hospital, while the man, who had drifted motionless downstream, later was pulled from the river and died at a hospital five days later.