A good Samaritan saved two toddlers who had wandered onto a Florida highway after getting out of the back gate of a nearby house.
The toddlers, both girls, wandered onto the highway Sunday in Cocoa Beach, Florida, about 59 miles east of Orlando. John Brittingham was driving southbound on A1A when he spotted the children, pulled over and ran into the roadway to retrieve them.
“Your adrenaline goes through the roof, and you just don’t even think,” Mr. Brittingham, a father of five and a grandfather, told WOFL-TV, adding that “anything walking A1A is dangerous. Seeing two toddlers crossing the road by themselves was absolutely shocking.”
The girls were too young to talk to Mr. Brittingham and tell him where they were staying. He told WESH-TV that he approached a house that was being used as a vacation rental and knocked at the front door, but no one answered. He then went around back and found the open back gate.
“There was an elderly couple and a young girl, and they immediately went into like, ’Oh my God, we’re so sorry.’ And I was like, ’Yeah, I know, I’m just glad I could get them back to you. They were out in the road, and your gate was open,’” Mr. Brittingham told WESH-TV.
The Brevard County Sheriff’s Office is trying to learn more about the incident, and investigators were seen at the house Tuesday, according to WOFL-TV.
