Saving Caitlin
Toolbox
By SUSAN ALLEN Times Argus Editor - Published: December 15, 2008
The Norwich University junior was creeping down Center Road in Middlesex last Sunday, worried about the darkness and the snowfall and the slick conditions, after leaving a nearby gathering when she felt her '89 Chevrolet Cavalier begin to slide out of control.
The car slid off the roadway and into a driveway, striking a car parked in what appeared to her quick glimpse to be a house under construction, and slipping nose-first into a pond.
"All of a sudden my car just stopped
I thought I was in a ditch," Caitlin recalled last week. "Then the water started coming up in the car. All I could do was stare for five seconds and try to process what was happening. This happens in movies!
"It didn't register to me to move until the water got up to my ankles," she said.
Caitlin tried to open her door, but the car was surrounded by ice, holding the door closed. She climbed in the back and began pushing on a door, which was also sealed by the ice. A window opened a crack, but not enough to allow her to get out of the vehicle.
So she started screaming.
"This guy came running down, I saw him coming," Caitlin said of Robert Meehan, who had been inside the house watching a Patriot's game with his 2- and 4-year-old at the time of the crash. "I was panicking like you wouldn't believe. I got the top half of my body out, but I got stuck.
"My legs were in the water in the car, and I couldn't feel my legs anymore," she said, noting that the water level was rising. "And I knew my car was still on. We were both afraid the car was going to go forward because it was still in drive.
"While I was in the back seat, it did go through my head that this was it," she said, acknowledging that she thought she might die. And the two kept screaming, she recalled. "He was yelling and screaming as much as I was."
Meehan began pounding on the ice around the door, eventually breaking it so he was able to open the door and pull Caitlin out. Her legs weren't working from the cold, so Meehan dragged her up to the house, sent her into the bathroom with some dry clothes, and called paramedics to check her condition.
She called her parents in the Boston area, where her family was having a birthday party for Caitlin's 9-year-old sister, and her father immediately climbed into his car in a snowstorm and headed to Meehan's home in Middlesex.
As they waited for Caitlin's father to arrive, the two began to talk.
"An hour later, when we both got over the whole shock of everything, I couldn't believe that actually happened," she said. They began joking. "I said, 'You were screaming at me to get out of the car,' and he was making fun of me because I managed to save my iPod. He pulled me out and I didn't know I had my iPod in my hand. It was reflex.
"He is my hero," she said of Meehan.
Robert's story
Robert Meehan was home with his two children, his wife out, when he heard a thud in front of the house. At first he thought it was a window from the renovation on his home that had fallen over. Or perhaps another car had skidded into his driveway; it was snowing, and two cars had already gone off the road, but were able to drive on.
In fact, it was 20-year-old Caitlin McCarthy's car sliding off the road, hitting Meehan's Subaru Outback, and slipping into Meehan's pond.
"I looked out the window and the first thing I saw were brake lights coming out of the pond. That moment was surreal
I thought, 'Is that real?' At the same time it was real and you had to do something right away.
"I had on sweats and a T-shirt and slippers. I just ran; I grabbed boots and told my son, 'Watch your sister,'" Meehan recalled last week. "I opened the door and heard her scream and I thought, 'Oh my God, this is real.'
"We tried to get her out. The car was in about 5 feet from the shore. It's kind of shallow for the first 6 or 7 feet and then it drops off. I was scared the car was at the drop-off and was going to keep going," he said. "Water had filled up the front of the car. She's in the back trying to get out. The door wouldn't open because of the ice. We were both screaming
I was screaming, 'Get out.'
"When I was running to the car, I was thinking, 'I'm going to have to go in that water to get somebody out.' It was a really scary feeling," he said. "We both thought this was life or death. For some reason, we were both convinced that car was going to go under.
"We talked to each other
I said to try twisting this way; it just wasn't working. I was so scared. Here I am out in the middle of no where, and I pictured the car going under. I thought, 'You'll have to go under and open that door and somehow get her out.' I was committed."
Meehan was finally able to pull McCarthy from the vehicle.
"It felt like it took forever. She collapsed. I said you have to get up. She couldn't feel her legs. She couldn't really move her legs," he said. He brought her into the house and called paramedics. "She was visibly upset, of course," he said, which was normal for "anybody who thought they were going to drown."
Caitlin's father immediately made the drive up from Massachusetts, but his car slid off Center Road about a mile from Meehan's house.
"He had to walk like a mile and it was so cold
like below zero with the wind chill factor. And he had just driven four hours to get her," Meehan said of Caitlin's father, Edward McCarthy.
But, he added, "I get it, man. I think I'd be pretty crazy if it was one of my kids."
Letter from Edward McCarthy to Town of Middlesex:
I am writing this letter to call attention to the actions of Mr. Robert Meehan, of Center Road in Middlesex.
On Sunday, Dec. 7, 2008, at 5 p.m., my daughter Caitlin McCarthy, a cadet at Norwich University, was driving home from a dinner engagement on Center Road. A snow squall had blown up, and the driving was bad. The temperature that night was 13 degrees. On a sharp turn at the bottom of a steep hill, Caitlin began to slide off the road. Losing control, she slid off the street, and down an adjacent driveway, belonging to Mr. and Mrs. Robert Meehan.
Her car skidded down the Meehan property, and crashed into a pond at the bottom of the hill. Caitlin's car broke through the 3-inch-thick ice, and began to quickly fill with water. Her doors would not open due to the intact ice on either side of her car. She was trapped. Scrambling into the back seat, she again tried to get out, but could not open the doors of her car. The entire front half of the car was now underwater, and the back seat was beginning to fill. The windows in the rear of the car would only roll down so far, a "safety feature" in the car, and Caitlin was unable to squeeze out of the narrow opening. She began to scream for help.
Inside his home, Mr. Robert Meehan heard a noise outside, and looked outside to see my daughter's tail lights sticking out of his pond. With no regard for his personal safety, Mr. Meehan ran outside, waded into the frozen pond, and grabbed a hold of my daughter's outstretched hands. Refusing to let go, he began to pound at the ice with his bare hands, and over the course of 10 minutes, he was able to break enough of it away to open the rear door, and free Caitlin from the car. Both waded back to the edge of the pond, where Caitlin collapsed into the snow. Mindful that she was still in danger of hypothermia, and again, putting others before himself, Mr. Meehan pulled Caitlin out of the snow, and got her inside his house. 911 was called, and then, my hysterical daughter called home.
Had it not been for Mr. Meehan, and his selfless actions, my daughter might not have been able to make that call. When I met him later that evening, he mentioned that his pond dropped off to deep water at a ledge that the car was teetering on. Had he not heard Caitlin calling for help, her car could easily have slid under completely, taking her with it.
I could not come up with adequate words to express how thankful I am for what Mr. Meehan did that night while standing in his living room. In writing this, I hoped to express some small crumb of how I feel, and also to point out what a special person you have living in your community.
Warmest Personal Regards,
Edward McCarthy
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