On Saturday at 7 p.m. it was shortly before 7 p.m., and Adam Kroll and John Minerd, employee of the Hardware Store Creta Ace, set up on the day before the day.
They wanted to close the doors of the shop in the Exchange Street west of the Illinois Route 394 when they saw the headlights of a vehicle that had been driven on a retention pond.
Moments later they heard the ice cracked on the pond.
“When the ice was there, it was crazy loud,” said Minerd.
He made sure that someone in the shop 911 as a Kroll named Kroll, who trains a firefighter from Crete, spent on seeing how a truck started to sink.
“His instincts have one and he ran out,” said Minerd.
They said they could be on the ice, an estimated at least 3 inches thick, and cried out the driver to open his door or roll down a window.
“At that time, water filled up the truck,” said Minerd.
“Time ticked,” said Kroll.
The driver started climbing the four -door pickup back seat when he first sank his nose, they said. They estimated that the water probably judged 6 feet deep, how much of the truck was visible.
“Adam and I decided that we had to do something pretty quickly,” said Minerd.
Both had small two-way radios employees who communicate with each other. Minerd threw him into a window and hoped that the glass would break, but the radio jumped off. At his throw, Kroll was able to smash through a window on the passenger side.
“It's not easy to break,” said Kroll.
At that point, they said that the driver suffocated when water poured into the truck. Kroll reached for a hooded jacket that the driver wore.
“He wouldn't get out for a second, he wasn't moving very well,” said Kroll.
Kroll was able to pull the driver through the window, bring him to the country, pull off the soaked jacket he was wearing, and wrapped the driver into his own coat.
Minerd and Kroll said they did not go into the water, but that it came to the ice on which they stood.
The police said that the driver had traveled to the east with the exchange and explained that his vision was covered by a vehicle that drove west with his high Beam headlights.
He turned to the ACE parking lot and believed that he drove on the Blacktop, although according to Chief Scott Pieritz, he drove onto the grass and on the retention pond.

His vehicle drove over the Iced-over pond until it broke through and sinked, the boss said.
When the police arrived, according to Pieritz, the driver was in the back of an ambulance from the Crete fire brigade, who received medical treatment.
He said the driver had not spoken English and an interpreter was needed to pass on what happened to the investigators.
Although they work in a hardware store in which items such as hammers are available, Minerd and Kroll said that they had no time to look for something heavier than the radio devices they were wearing.
Minerd (62) and Kroll (25) are both Crete residents. Minerd said he grew up in Michigan and was part of his youth on frozen lakes and ice fishing.

Kroll grew up in the southwestern suburbs and visited the Lincoln-Way West High School in New Lenox.
He said when I grew up, he always wanted to help others.
“I am always down to help someone who needs it,” said Kroll.
He said it was something he had never expected to meet at work.
“I am glad that he will be alive and safe,” he said.
Kroll said he repeated the events in his head on Saturday. He and Minerd said it was probably less than 5 minutes after the time when the truck went into the pond until the driver was pulled out.
“If we hadn't been where we were or in the back of the business, it could have been different,” said Kroll.
“It could have been a recovery instead of a rescue operation,” said Minerd.
mnolan@southtownstar.com