Fishing buddies Tyler Dauzat and Brock Newcomb of Rapides Parish, Louisiana, were fishing a local benefit bass tournament on Feb. 8 when something caught their eye.
They were in west-central Louisiana’s Cane River south of the town of Natchitoches. It was about midday and the duo had decided to run their 18-foot Ranger boat back to a riverbank they’d caught about 10 bass, including a nice 5-pounder, earlier.
“The wind was blowing 30-miles per hour, and we were running back to the good bank when we saw something floating in the middle of the river,” Dauzat tells Outdoor Life. “We first thought it was a boat. But as we got closer, we could see it was a small four-door car just floating along.”
There were pieces of a car also floating, and when they realized what it was, they thought maybe there were two cars that hit one another. Newcomb approached what turned out to be a single car — a 2018 Honda Accord — slowly in his bass boat and circled it.
“We thought someone may have been in the water, so Brock took it slow going up to the car,” says Dauzat, 33, a power company lineman. “Then we saw there was an elderly man inside the car at the steering wheel with his seat belt on. The windshield was broken, and the car air bag had deployed, but had already deflated when we got to him. He looked really dazed, pretty much confused and out of it.”
The car windows were up, and the car was filling with water as the anglers eased alongside the floating car in their boat. Dauzat believes the car had crashed into the river about 10 minutes before they found it floating. He remembers hearing a far-away loud noise around then, but hadn’t been able to place it.
“I knew we had to get him out and I had a pair of pliers I was gonna use to break his car window and grab him,” Dauzat says. “But when we got up to the car in our boat, he looked out at me and I told him to wind down his driver’s side window — and he did.”
Dauzat unfastened the man’s seat belt and tried to pull him out of the car through the window. But the car seat was damaged, and he couldn’t get a good grip on the driver.
“I told Brock he had to help me,” Dauzat says. “Brock was holding the Ranger with the outboard against the car. So, he put the engine in neutral and came forward to help me grab the man and get him out.”
Together, Dauzat and Newcomb were able to muscle the 80-year-old man out of the car as gently as possible and into their bass boat. Newcomb had already alerted authorities they’d found a man in a car in the Cane River, and they had dispatched emergency personnel to the scene.
“The man had a cut near his eye and was bleeding pretty bad,” Dauzat continued. “The rive bank is really steep along there, and there was no way we could carefully get him out of the boat and up the bank to emergency workers. “So, we took him to Shell Beach Landing, where the tournament was headquartered that day because they had a dock.”
The anglers ran their boat to Shell Beach to get the man some medical assistance. One of the tournament officials was also a nurse and rendered care to the man as they waited for an ambulance.
“By that time the man was starting to come out of his daze,” Dauzat says. “He was very thankful for our help and wanted to pay us. Of course, we said no, and soon an ambulance arrived, and they took him to the hospital.”
Dauzat says the man would recover, although he had sustained a ruptured spleen and lots of bumps, bruises, and some cuts.
“It all worked out okay, and he’ll be fine. I got a call the next day from the man’s daughter to thank us.”
Dauzat says the man missed a turn in the road on Highway 494 along the Cane River near the town of Bermuda.
“Some people thought he was looking at his phone and crashed,” Dauzat says. “But his phone was in his pocket, so that wasn’t true. He just missed the road turn, which we’ve learned is a bad spot, and other cars have gone down it, too.”
Dauzat says the car went 100 feet down the riverbank, over a sea wall, and crashed into the river. He believes the car smashing down into the river broke the car windshield and likely caused the man’s injuries. The Natchitoches Parish Sheriff’s Office dive team began recover efforts that afternoon to locate car for recovery. It had sunk not long after the rescue.
The bass tournament, meanwhile, was over for Dauzat and Newcomb, so there was no payday for their efforts.
“If we’d won anything we were gonna donate back to the tournament anyway, because it was a benefit event,” says Dauzat. “The money isn’t important, getting that man out of his car and to a hospital are what mattered.”
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Some people are calling Dauzat and Newcomb heroes, including local law enforcement.
“What Brock and Tyler did was nothing short of heroic,” said Natchitoches Parish sheriff Stuart Wright. “They risked their own safety to help a stranger in need, and without their intervention, the outcome could have been much worse. We are incredibly grateful for their swift response and bravery.”
But the two anglers don’t quite see it that way.
“We just did what I think anyone else would have done,” says Dauzat. “That elderly man in the car was someone’s dad or grandpa. It could have been my family member, and I’d want someone to help them, too.”