14-Yr.-Old Hailed A Hero After Jumping Off Bridge To Rescue Drowning Suicidal Senior

Ask some people what they think of today’s average teenager and you won’t always get the most positive response. But that may be because they never met 14-year-old Corey Warburton. The Grafton, Australia youngster was on his way to a local skate park Down Under when he came across a scene that would challenge the bravery of someone twice his age.

It started when he spotted a piece of paper that turned out to be a woman’s suicide note, and then found her clothes and her glasses discarded on a bridge. When he looked into the waters below he got the shock of his life – he saw the body of the distraught author of that final farewell message floating face down in the murky depths. 

Without time to hesitate and finding he didn’t have his cell phone, Corey made the riskiest choice of his life – he jumped off the bridge and went in after her. He caught up to the 70-year-old victim but his heroic race against time didn’t end there. For more than half an hour, he struggled to keep both of them afloat, trying desperately to reach dry land, as the woman lapsed in and out of consciousness. 

“The only thing she ever said to me was when I dove in and came up next to her … all she said was to help her,” he remembers. He recalls only having the strength to say a few poignant words back. “Just don’t die on me,” he pleaded with the woman. “Because I don’t want to have to pull a body out of the river.”

After his 30 minute struggle, Warburton finally reached the reeds, and was pulled back to shore by police and another teen. “I wasn’t really afraid of what I was doing,” he admits now. “I wasn’t really feeling any emotion … All I pretty much wanted to do was to get myself and the lady to safety.”

The young man whose day in the park was interrupted by a matter of life and death is being recommended for a bravery award, an outcome that doesn’t surprise his proud mother. “It’s not out of character for Corey,” agrees Stefani Warburton. “Corey has done stuff like that since he was tiny.”

She admits she didn’t believe his story at first, but when reporters started calling the house one after another she became convinced. The Grade 9 student remains modest about his accomplishment, and has been overwhelmed by the attention he’s received.

The woman he saved remains in hospital in stable condition and is expected to make a full recovery, a diagnosis she owes to the courage and quick thinking of a teenage boy who got involved and refused to give up until he’d played the white knight in real life.