Six Year Old Saves Friend

FAYETTEVILLE, Ga. -- A five year old boy in Fayetteville was unconscious at the bottom of a pool. He was just moments from death when his six-year-old friend dived in and saved him.

Six-year-old Haden Stusak was at his grandmother's house in Fayetteville for a graduation party. Around thirty adults were standing and sitting near the pool in the backyard.

"Everybody was having a great time," Judith Buddah said. "Watching the kids, watching mine. He had swimmies on; he was having a great time.

No one saw 5-year-old Josiah Buddah slip into the pool.. He's the only one that knows what happened.

"I was over there," he said, pointing to the deep end of the pool. "I took off the floaters and jumped right into the pool. I should have swum up, but it was too hard."

Without those inflatable swimmies, he sank to the bottom. A woman saw the shadow in the pool, and tried to reach it, but could not.

"No one could see anything on the bottom," Haden Stusak said.

The six year old dived in and discovered the shadow was his friend Josiah.

"He was kinds like this," Haden says, imitating convulsions. "I grabbed him by the elbow and I could swim with one hand on the wall."

Haden's mom, Deborah said, "They were pulling him out and I heard them say, 'He's not breathing and there's no pulse'."

Another guest was a nurse. She started CPR. For five minutes, Josiah lay unresponsive. It looked like Haden was too late.

"I just kept saying to myself, I cannot accept this," Judith Buddah said. Then "Deborah and another friend of mine whispered in my ear that he's ok."

"We keep telling ourselves that we could have been going to a funeral today," Deborah Stusak said.

Instead, it's another day at the pool. Josiah has a zip-up floating swimsuit impossible for him to escape. Haden has one rescue under his belt. He wants to add more. He wants to be a firefighter when he grows up.

Right now, he's just a 6-year-old boy. He's not a hero he says, just a friend.