THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1996, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Thursday, July 11, 1996 TAG: 9607090121
SECTION: NORFOLK COMPASS PAGE: 03 EDITION: FINAL
COLUMN: THUMBS UP
SOURCE: BY KATHRYN DARLING, STAFF WRITER
LENGTH: 55 lines
Two or three times a week, Hank Gavan wades out into the Chesapeake Bay on a sandbar along the Hampton Roads Bridge-Tunnel to fish for flounder.
If he stays on that sandbar, he can fish a quarter-mile out in water only chest or waist high, depending on the tide.
Gavan was fishing on the sandbar May 22 about 7 p.m. when Glen Anthony Fields, a motorcyclist eluding police, crashed on the bridge and fell into the water 20 feet away from Gavan, splashing him.
When he heard the crash, Gavan figured it was just another wreck on the bridge. Then he heard something hit the rail. But debris and bottles often come flying off the bridge out of cars, sometimes hitting the railway and pelting him with glass. ``I'm going to start wearing a hard hat'' when he's out fishing, he said.
So Gavan said he didn't pay too much attention to the accident until he felt the splash from the fall.
He went to investigate when he spotted a motorcycle helmet.
When he realized a person was attached to the helmet, he threw his fishing pole and net into the water and headed toward the man, he said. Gavan was never able to recover his equipment.
Fields was floating face down in the water, said Gavan. He turned Fields over, but the man was unconscious and wasn't breathing.
Gavan said he hit Fields in the chest and he began breathing. The water was chest high and Fields was buoyant, so Gavan started to push him to shore.
At one point, Fields regained consciousness and fought with Gavan. ``He was in an escape mode because he was running from the cops,'' Gavan said.
Gavan said he told Fields, who didn't realize how hurt he was, to lie back and relax.
It wasn't a soothing talk, said Gavan, who was afraid that if he lost his footing and fell off the sandbar the current would pull them both away into deeper water.
David Karlson II, an airman stationed at Oceana and an emergency medical technician with the Phoebus Volunteer Rescue Squad and a volunteer firefighter with the Phoebus Fire Company, came down off the bridge and helped Gavan pull Fields out of the water.
The two were able to keep Fields, who was seriously injured, stable until the paramedics arrived.
Gavan, who has lived in the Willoughby area since he moved to Norfolk five years ago to be near his mother, sisters and extended family, is a bio med equipment technician for The Tidewater Renal Dialysis Center. MEMO: If you know someone whom you feel is deserving of a Thumbs Up!
feature, call Kathryn Darling at 446-2286. ILLUSTRATION: Staff photo by JIM WALKER
Hank Gavan was fishing on a sandbar when a motorcyclist plunged into
the water. by CNB