A 17-year-old heading into the U.S. Navy was recently recorded performing a heroic rescue by jumping from a jet ski onto an unmanned speedboat to stop the boat from spinning uncontrollably.
According to WBZ, Brady Procon, a 17-year-old from Ludlow, Massachusetts, jumped from a jet ski onto an unmanned speedboat that was spinning out of control on New Hampshire’s Lake Winnipesaukee.
A video shared on X, formerly Twitter, by Western Mass News shows Procton and another jet ski driver circling the out-of-control boat before the teenager jumped from the jet ski onto the unmanned boat.
“I was like, ‘I got to stop this thing somehow,'” Procon told WBZ. “Everybody else was just standing around waiting for something to happen.”
According to WBZ, the boating incident occurred when a sailboat mast hit the throttle of a boat being used to instruct a group of children into full blast and forced the instructor and children overboard. The boat then continued to spin out of control for several minutes until Procon executed a heroic rescue.
“We were sitting on the back porch, and there was a bunch of noise in the no-wake zone. My dad said, ‘Hey there is nobody on that boat,'” Procon said.
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Rich Bono, a neighbor who recorded Procon’s rescue efforts, reportedly contacted marine patrol to notify officials about the unmanned boat but did not receive any response. Procon then jumped on a jet ski in order to help rescue the children who had been thrown into the water by the out-of-control boat. As Procon was navigating on his jet ski, he spotted another man on a jet ski and asked if he could jump on the back of it.
“I jumped off my jet ski and hopped onto his jet ski, and then we chased the boat down and I jumped off it,” Procon said. “As soon as I got on the boat, I grabbed the wheel and yanked on the throttle, almost put the thing right into reverse.”
While Procon landed hard in the driver’s seat of the unmanned boat, he was quickly able to stop the boat from spinning.
“There’s a million things that could go wrong. If he had missed that boat and landed in the water, that thing could have come around. The propeller could have chewed him up. He could have bounced off the boat, and sent it in another direction,” Bono said. “I understand he is heading off the Navy in two months, so he will have a story to tell everybody.”
WBZ reported that Procon is planning to join the Navy in September, where he hopes to learn how to safely dispose of explosives.
