A Montana teenager heard someone yelling from the Yellowstone River and reached for the skill he had been practising all year.
Jory Thomas, 14, was spending the Fourth of July weekend at his grandparents’ home near Greycliff in Sweet Grass County when four people in a raft and on a paddleboard struck a bridge pier and fell into the river.
Three made it to shore. A fourth person held onto a cooler and drifted downriver.
Thomas told KTVQ News 2 he did not hesitate. He emptied his pockets, grabbed his lariat and waded into the river up to his chest.
“I actually started really getting into roping this year. I went to brandings and started roping cattle then, and I started getting better,” Thomas told KTVQ News 2. “Every afternoon when it cools off, I go out and rope the roping dummy.”
After getting the man to let go of the cooler, Thomas caught him around the arm and neck on his first try. A bystander then helped him pull the man in.
Thomas’s father, a volunteer firefighter, called 911 when he heard the screaming. Police records show a sheriff’s deputy arrived three minutes after the call, but by then the rescue was over.
“My opinion, Jory saved the individual’s life, 100 percent,” Sweet Grass County Sheriff Alan Ronneberg told Cowboy State Daily. “Had Jory not acted, I believe the chances of this individual not making it to shore were very slim.”
Thomas’s father said the fast current in that part of the Yellowstone quickly leads to rapids, logjams and other obstacles.
“I felt pretty good afterwards that I knew he was okay and was out of the water,” Thomas said.
His grandmother, Sandy Thomas, was also there.
“He comes up, and he said, ‘I think I just saved a life,’” Sandy told KTVQ. “And we all said, ‘Yeah, you did.’”
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