An elderly man drowned to death after jumping into a lake and saving his girlfriend’s 5-year-old son.
David Moore, 66, was on a pontoon boat on Smithville Lake when the boy and another person who was not wearing a life jacket started floating away, KCTV reported.
Moore plunged into the water and managed to get both of them back on board the boat, and the children survived.
‘He was able to get the boy back,’ family friend Hank Penland told the TV station.
‘But it took Dave farther away and pushed him under. He couldn’t stay up. There was an undercurrent.’
Moore’s head went underwater three times and he did not surface again on Saturday.
His body was later found by the Missouri State Highway Patrol.
‘David spent a lifetime helping others out the best he could. David lost his life helping others out and wouldn’t have had it end any other way,’ states a GoFundMe page for his funeral expenses.
‘We will miss him deeply, thank you from his family.’
Moore’s heroic final act did not surprise a childhood friend.
‘He would be the first one to help anybody,’ said William Penland.
Moore’s sister, Teresa Petty, said finding out about his death was ‘like a nightmare’.
‘I just lost it and started crying right away,’ she said. ‘I just wish he’d have put his life jacket on.’
Family members said they do not think he was drinking.
‘We’re waiting on the autopsy to see because my brother was a good swimmer,’ said Randy Moore.
Highway patrol officials have urged everyone out on water to wear life vests.
The St Joseph, Missouri, native was employed for more than 14 years as a quality control supervisor at Triumph Foods.
‘David was an avid outdoorsman, who enjoyed hunting, fishing, boating, and riding his motorcycle,’ states his obituary. ‘He was an avid (Kansas City) Chiefs fan, who enjoyed being around family and friends.’
Moore drowned after a father-of-three and 9/11 survivor died trying to rescue children after a raft flipped on Lake Michigan on the Fourth of July last year.
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