Good Samaritans Help Man After He Drove Car Into Lake

MIAMI (CBSMiami) - A wet, exhausted Emmanuel Joseph is pulled from a lake in Davie after his car jolted in after he throwing it in reverse.

"I backed in, put it in reverse and I heard the noise, "vroom," and it just went in the lake," Joseph said.

Cell phone video right after, shows that Joseph was able to climb out of his car.  For a moment, he held on for dear life, but as the car began to sink, he decided to make a swim for it.

"When I was in there, I see myself so little," he pondered.  "I see all the people outside and I said, 'I'm going to die," but no.  I say I can swim and thank God I'm ok, I'm fine."

Joseph was not alone out there. Three guys pressure washing were nearby and jumped into action. "He said, 'I know how to swim, I'm all right,'" said pressure washer Michael Levy.  "So then we saw the car went down, all the way down. He start swimming, but he had a hat on the hand, I'm telling him, 'Let the hat go and swim.'"

When Joseph began to slow down and get tired, they threw him a life line.

"We were trying to throw the pressure cleaning line to him so he could grab it so we could pull him ashore," Levy said. "We were not going to let him die or anything."

Eventually someone jumped in and helped him ashore. "I would say 'thank you!' Joseph said. "They save my life.  Although I can swim, after God, they saved my life.  Those three guys working there and another guy, they save my life."

Joseph says he will always be grateful to those strangers who cared enough to make sure he would make it home. "When you in there, you there, you don't see nobody, you gotta believe in the man upstairs, believe me."