Deerfield Police Save Life

rescued a man after he drove into a retention pond and his car was filling with water Jan. 1 at 540 Lake Cook Road, according to a Deerfield Police report.

Officer Steve Pettorelli, Sgt. Iain McCowan and Sgt. Bill Annen worked as a team to save the man. The pond is eight to nine feet deep, according to the report.

A seizure while driving may have caused the accident, according to information in the report that quoted sources from the Highland Park Hospital emergency room. No alcohol was found in his system.

Pettorelli was first on the scene and saw the car in the pond filling with water with the man inside. McCowan and Annen arrived shortly to help. Witnesses called police to report the incident.

Pettorelli grabbed the man’s belt loop to hold him up. McCowan cut the seat belt with his pocket knife as he and Annen pulled the victim from the car while Pettorelli kept holding him up.

“Officers were keeping the driver’s head from being submersed as the car filled with water,” according to the report.

One witness, Harry Polites, told police he saw the 1995 Mercedes exit Coromandel Drive and head south on Corporate Drive, according to the report. The car was driven “erratically,” struck a curb deflating a tire, drove along the grassy median and eventually went into the pond.

The driver was transported to the Highland Park Hospital emergency room by ambulance. Pettorelli spoke to him there. The driver could not remember the accident or being submerged in water, according to the report.

As Pettorelli was talking to him, he started seizing, according to the report. That is when hospital staff told Pettorelli, “this was probably what caused the accident.”