MARTIN COUNTY, Fla. — Newly released body camera video shows the moments deputies helped save a man’s life after a ramp collapse in Martin County.

It happened on Sunday morning when the man’s father was wheeling him onto a boat and the ramp they were using came down.

The man is nonverbal and can’t move his legs or hands and within 90 seconds, the first Martin County Sheriff’s Office deputy was on scene.

Body camera video shows several good Samaritans in the water, surrounding the man who was strapped into a wheelchair and holding his head above water.

Mark Appler was the first deputy to arrive.

“We learned the victim weighed about 130 pounds,” he said. “The wheelchair itself weighed 230 pounds, and being everything was wet, it was making everything a little heavier.”

Their first plan was to use a rope to pull the man and the chair out of the water, but the strap connecting the man to the chair made that impossible.

“The top harness that he had was still folding him in and then started to kind of choke him a little bit,” said Appler. “So we lower him back to the water level to reassess our next approach.”

That’s when Deputy Sam Oliver arrived.

“It’s pretty instinctual,” he said. “Once I got there, I saw the urgency and just jumped in.”

Their next plan was to unharness the man from the chair and use a life vest.

To keep him above the water, Martin County Fire Rescue provided a backboard, and Oliver swam the man to shore, where he was lifted to safety.

He had a few scrapes and bruises, but was mostly uninjured.

The deputies had a story to tell and a lesson learned. To nobody’s surprise, deputies say this is the first time they’ve rescued a man in a wheelchair from the water.

They say it’s not exactly something they trained for, but added they will be better prepared if it ever happens again.

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