LUMPKIN COUNTY, Ga. — The Lumpkin County Sheriff’s Office said its rescue crews pulled a woman and a baby to safety after their pickup truck ran off the road into rushing waters. The woman is now facing DUI charges.
The rescue happened around 9 a.m. in Clay Creek near Dahlonega. The Georgia State Patrol says Andrea Marie McMeans, 28, was driving on Clay Creek Falls Road with her 2-month-old when she tried to negotiate a curve and ran off the road. The car went down an embankment, hit a tree and then landed in the creek. The rushing waters pulled the truck 300 feet downstream.
The truck ended up facing north with water rushing up to the hood and onto the windshield.
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The Sheriff's Office says two deputies arrived before firefighters and tried to get in the water to help but were nearly swept away.
Rescue crews showed up and helped get McMeans and her child to safety. The 2-month-old was rescued first, and then McMeans.
"You can train and train, but once you get there, there is always something different," Lumpkin County Batallion Chief Daniel Morris said. "The water was moving extremely fast. It was also rising. From the time we got there, it kept going up."
Video from the Dahlonega Nugget shows members of the Lumpkin County Fire Rescue and the Lumpkin County sheriff's deputies using a ladder to climb onto the truck bed and assist McMeans out of the truck. The officers then helped her crawl across the ladder to the arms of the crew.
Morris says the entire rescue took around 30 minutes.
"We set up a rope rigging situation with a ladder and were able to extricate both the mother and infant out of the truck," Morris said.
McMeans and her infant were taken to Northeast Georgia Medical Center with non-life-threatening injuries.
The GSP later obtained arrest warrants for McMeans on failure to maintain lane, DUI and DUI-child endangerment.