By Andrew Strickler
Newsday
BAY SHORE, N.Y — A good Samaritan who helped pull a trapped woman from a car that plunged off a Bay Shore pier said he “would have died trying” to save another woman if he’d known she was there.
“By the time the marine units ... got there, I needed saving myself,” said Gregory Zegel, a handyman visiting from Vass, N.C.
Zegel, who grew up in East Islip, was working Monday afternoon on a boat docked at the pier near Ocean Avenue when a Ford sedan carrying two elderly women went off the edge, police said.
One woman died, while the other remained in critical condition yesterday in Southside Hospital in Bay Shore.
Zegel, who heard but did not see the crash, said he rushed about 100 yards to find the car overturned in the cold, chest-deep water of the Great South Bay.
He kicked off his shoes, dropped his wallet, and jumped in. Zegel, 43, said he was able to partly open the passenger’s side door but felt nothing inside. But on the driver’s side, he felt “something soft” and struggled to pull a woman by her coat out of the car.
The woman, whom police have not identified, still wore her glasses and her eyes were open, Zegel said, but she was unresponsive.
After one failed attempt, Zegel said he pulled her onto the underside of the car with the help of another person who also had jumped in to help. Zegel then began to compress her chest. “I couldn’t even feel her chest, my hands were so numb,” Zegel said.
Suffolk patrol officers, followed by Bay Shore firefighters, arrived within five minutes and administered CPR to the woman, while other officers tried to determine whether anyone else was in the car.
It took between 20 and 30 more minutes for firefighters to break a window and pull the second woman out, police said. Both were unconscious and in cardiac arrest before being taken to the hospital, police said.
Zegel was treated for hypothermia at Good Samaritan Hospital Medical Center in West Islip and released.
Suffolk police still don’t know why the car plunged off the pier because no eyewitnesses have come forward.
“We know someone must have seen this happen because it was such a nice day and there must have been people around,” said Det. Sgt. William Rand.
Police have withheld both victims’ names pending notification of families.
Officer Jason Morge, 34, one of four Suffolk patrol officers who jumped into the bay to help, said the 38-degree water was “enough to take the breath right out of you.”
Assistant Chief of Patrol Nicholas Mango said underwater rescues, especially in near-freezing water, are unpredictable and dangerous.