Boy, 5, rescues drowning dad

A Swedish father who couldn't swim was saved by his five-year-old son at an outdoor swimming pool in Falun in central Sweden on Sunday.

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Dan Hed, who had never learned to swim, accidentally ended up in deep water where he couldn't touch the bottom and started to panic. He struggled to keep his head above water and started to sink.

Then his five-year-old son Pontus jumped in the water and took hold of his father by his neck. The father was then able to hold onto a staircase and climb out of the water, reported Falu-Kuriren newspaper.

“He swam out to me with his armbands and saw that I was panicking. It was really only about 10-20 seconds but it is a really long time when you can't swim. Afterwards he told me I really shouldn't be out where it's deep,” the father told the newspaper.

Hed said that he hadn't really realised that his son had saved him until he talked to his wife. “I am really proud of him,” he said.

The father has never learned to swim because he was born with a split eardrum and must avoid getting water in his ear. Hed told the newspaper he might now learn how to swim anyway.