Heroic 9-year-old girl saves nephew from drowning

The little girl noticed something out of place in the water, and instead of dismissing it, decided to investigate further. Had she not done so, a life may have been lost that day.

9-year-old Sandy Caswell was down at Terrible Creek in Covington County with her family for a lovely day outing. Caswell had been playing around with members of the family when she looked towards the creek and saw something odd.

Initially, she thought that the object was just a bucket left behind by the people who had been there before her family.

But upon closer inspection, she realized that it was actually her 16-month-old nephew, Dwight Malley, who must have wandered into the water unsupervised.

"I look back and I saw my nephew floating in the water," she told WDAM 7 News.

The little girl reacted immediately, screaming to her family that Dwight was in the water as she charged to his rescue.

"But I don't even know how to swim, I was just worried about Man-man [Dwight]. All I could do was pick him up slightly and push him towards his dad," she told the news station.

Fortunately, although she struggled, she managed to keep herself afloat enough to reach Dwight and be able to push him towards shore where his anxious mother and father had run.

Belinda Malley - Caswell's older sister and Dwight's mother - had only looked away from her son for a second, and hadn't even heard any movement by the water, or even s aplash.

"We didn't hear a splash, we didn't hear a sound," Malley said. "We didn't hear him holler out, anything. Like I said, had she not had screamed out, we may not have seen him for them the couple of seconds that it took for her to realize it."

Malley quickly pulled her son from the water, and the moment she picked him up she realized he was still breathing.

At just 9 years old, Caswell understands the importance of her actions, realizing that if she hadn't seen Dwight in the water the story could have had a very different ending.