Ransom S. Bill, Jr., helped to save Theresa L. Fregria from drowning, Votaw, Texas, March 11, 1967. Theresa, 2, fell into an abandoned water well lined with concrete pipe sections eight inches in diameter and slid to 20 feet below ground level 10 feet above water 25 feet deep. Rescue units were summoned, and oxygen was supplied to the well while digging around it proceeded cautiously lest Theresa be jarred from her position and slide into the water. When darkness fell, floodlights were erected. Bill, 45, equipment store owner, a member of a volunteer rescue team kept Theresa under observation from the top of the well. A well-drilling outfit arrived, and a hole three and a half feet in diameter was bored 18 inches from the well, around which a pit by then had been dug to a depth of eight feet. A steel casing 18 feet long and 38 inches in diameter was inserted into the bored hole. By drilling a few feet at a time, the casing was worked to a depth of 20 feet below ground level. The bored hole then was extended downward five feet farther through wet sand and reached watery sand. By that time Theresa had been in the well about nine hours and had slid to within two feet of the water. Bill, wearing a leather shoulder harness with a rope tied to a metal ring at the back, climbed onto the top of the casing as soon as the drill was removed. With men holding the safety rope, he was lowered through the casing to the bored hole below it. The men held him in position with the rope, the watery sand covering him to his knees. A shovel was lowered to Bill, who dug a tunnel 18 inches through the wet sand to the piping of the well. Minor slides occurred, and the watery sand rose to his hips. A hammer was lowered to him, and he made an opening in a section of the pipe. Theresa was about eighteen inches below the opening. Some wet sand dropped from the top of the tunnel, raising the watery sand almost to Bill’s waist. He carefully knocked out small pieces of the pipe until the opening was eight inches wide and 18 inches high. Bill reached through the opening and took hold of Theresa but was unable to move her because her feet were wedged behind her. Holding her with one hand, he reached downward in the pipe and freed her feet. Bill then drew Theresa through the opening and moved backward with her in the bored hole below the casing. He held Theresa as the men pulled on the safety rope and raised them to the top of the casing, from which they then were removed. 49469-5382
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