DATE: Thursday, August 28, 1997             TAG: 9708280503

SECTION: LOCAL                   PAGE: B8   EDITION: FINAL 

SOURCE: BY ADAM BERNSTEIN, STAFF WRITER 

DATELINE: PORTSMOUTH                        LENGTH:   64 lines

YOUTH SPENDS 40 MINUTES HIDING IN RIVER TO ESCAPE FROM ASSAILANTS THE CHURCHLAND TEEN IS RESCUED BY THE POLICE AND COAST GUARD.

A 17-year-old Churchland High School student was rescued Tuesday night by police and the Coast Guard after spending 40 minutes in an inlet along the Elizabeth River to elude two attackers.

The teen-ager had dog-paddled with his right hand while he called police with a cellular phone in his left hand. Eventually, he became so tired, swimming in the 12-foot-deep, 70-degree, snake-infested water that he grabbed a barnacle-encrusted channel marker for support.

The 6-foot, 200-pound male said he raced into Lilly Creek, between the West Norfolk and Churchland bridges, after being punched in the face and kicked by two assailants about 10:20 p.m.

At 10:40 p.m., police alerted the Coast Guard, and Chief Petty Officers Terrance Haner, 26, and Jason Hays, 22, dashed to a rubber pontoon boat.

It took until 11:05 p.m. for Haner and Hays to locate the teen-ager, chilled and clinging to the telephone-pole length support. He was handed to police at the Scale O' De Whale restaurant seven minutes later, taken to Maryview Medical Center and released after a brief checkup. He got home by 1 a.m.

``I tried to take a short cut to my neighborhood,'' he said Wednesday.

Police believe the altercation may have occurred in the 3200 block of River Edge Drive.

He described how his attackers, whom he could not describe well, approached him.

``From behind me they called, `Hey man, you have a cigarette?' I told them no, but they said I was lying and started cussing at me.''

That's when he got decked, swung once and struck his assailant, and then decided ``the only way they'd not beat the hell out of me was to go into the water.''

He did, looking to see if the others were in pursuit. The teen said he was nearsighted and could make out only a few shadows on the riverbank. So he stayed in the water and called the police.

Earlier in the day, he had put the cell phone in a pocket of his shorts before running an errand for his mother.

Before diving into the water, he pulled the phone from his pocket. He kept it above water and called police.

He said he swam about a quarter of a mile before heading toward the channel marker, which was about 100 yards from shore.

The Coast Guard said it took awhile to find him in the darkness. Haner and Hays first searched other channel markers along the Western Branch of the Elizabeth River.

The teen had spent most of the day with friends in Norfolk and on his way home asked them to drop him off a few miles from home. He wanted to spend time with other friends in Portsmouth.

After finding his Portsmouth companions out, he said he thought it was easier to walk home and risk a small argument with his mother, who had set his curfew at 10 p.m., than call and ask for a ride home.

His mother, who lives with his stepfather on Wake Forest Road, said she was watching the 11 p.m. news when she suddenly felt a chill run through her body.

``I don't know how to explain it, but a mother gets this feeling,'' she said, upset but still laughing a little about the image of her son wading into the water, carrying the phone above his head.

The police called her about 11 p.m. to say her son was at Maryview. There, she met her son, who had a puffy left eye and was minus one shoe. The thick river mud had sucked the shoe off his foot. KEYWORDS: ASSAULT RESCUE

Send Suggestions or Comments to webmaster@scholar.lib.vt.edu