Local man saves woman from drowning

Wes Smith says he isn’t a hero. But his actions last week prove otherwise.

An Amarillo woman owes her life to Smith’s quick response to save her from drowning at Lake Greenbelt on Tuesday, July 17.

Smith said he was parked on top of a hill near the Lakeside Marina early that afternoon, looking down on what the lake calls Short Beach. It was there that he saw a group of four women and felt like something was wrong.

“You just get a feeling that something isn’t right sometimes,” Smith said.

As he watched, he noticed that a float had gotten away from the group. Two women had gone after it while the other two remained on the shore.

“I’m not really sure what happened, but I saw one of them start flapping her arms like she was struggling,” Smith said, “and the friend started toward her. That’s when I hauled butt down there.”

As a 22-year employee for Greenbelt Water Authority and a 15-year veteran of the Clarendon Volunteer Fire Department and Dive Team, Smith has dealt with his fair share of fatal drownings at the lake. He raced his pickup down to the shore by the dam, then stripped to his underwear, ran barefoot across the rock-strewn shore, and hit the water as the woman’s friend in the water was calling for help.

Between 75 and 80 yards from the shore, Smith got to the woman as she was yelling, “I can’t breathe!”

“She was about to go under when I grabbed her,” Smith said. “She was out as I pulled her to shore. Her friend helped me get her up to where I could start CPR.”

An unidentified man boating nearby pulled up about that time, and Smith asked him to take over CPR so he could get back to his truck and call 911.

“She was in and out,” Smith said. “Then the ambulance showed up. We carried her to the ambulance, and they Lifestarred her to Amarillo.”

Smith said none of the women were wearing lifejackets and he didn’t think they had been drinking. The Donley County Sheriff’s Office identified the woman in distress as 21-year-old Crystal Brown of Amarillo.

Clarendon Fire Chief Jeremy Powell said Brown is very lucky because hers is not how these cases usually turn out.

“Wes was in the right place at the right time, and she is very fortunate to have someone that trained nearby when that happened,” Powell said.

Although one of her friends did thank him that day, Smith, who had bruises on his feet from running across rocks, hasn’t heard from Brown. That doesn’t seem to bother him though, and he really doesn’t want attention.

“I’m not anybody’s hero,” he said.

Smith said he joined the volunteer fire department to be on the dive team; and while he didn’t want to go diving for another body at the lake, that thought wasn’t the first thing on his mind last Tuesday.

“It was just instinct,” Smith said. “I think anybody would do it. God just put me in the right place that day.”