A newly released recording of a call placed to 911 when a woman drove her car off a New Jersey bridge and began sinking under water shows how close she came to drowning in the Passaic River before a bystander dove in and rescued her.
The caller named Ricky tells the dispatcher he sees a car in the water just off the bridge connecting Nutley and Lyndhurst, then realizes there is someone in the car.
"I'm pulling up to it right now to see if anybody is inside that car but it's inside the river right now," he says in the harrowing call released by Nutley police Thursday.
Then, as he spots someone in the car, he says, "Yes, yes! There is somebody in the car!"
"Holy s---. Tell them to get here quick. I can't swim or I would jump in there," he says.
He addresses someone else at the scene, telling them, "They're inside the car, I'm looking at them right now, they're trying to keep the face above the water."
The next part of the recording narrates the rescue made by Jason Moss, who was leaving the gym when he saw what was happening and jumped into the river.
"Come on, hold on," Ricky says to himself, then he shouts to Moss: "They're right there, you see? She's going under! Open that! There you go. Can you reach inside?"
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"Be careful, bro! Be careful," he shouts.
The dispatcher asks Ricky if someone had gone into the water.
"Yes," Ricky tells her. "There is a gentleman in the water helping them now. He's trying to -- he just got the door open."
The 30-year-old Moss told NBC 4 New York Tuesday he briefly panicked in the water when the door momentarily jammed.
"I think the scariest moment, I turned around at one point to see if there were any rescuers coming because I couldn't get the door open," he said.
Police commended Moss earlier in the week, saying the woman would have drowned if he didn't jump into action.
They were investigating what caused the 50-year-old Cranford woman to jump a small curb on Dock Street and plunge into 10 feet of water just north of the DeJessa Bridge.
Emergency responders treated the woman and her rescuer on the scene, and transported the woman to a local hospital. She's expected to be OK.
Moss, who's from Secaucus, refused a transport to the hospital, and went to an urgent care facility himself to get a tetanus shot, police said.
Moss was humble when he spoke to NBC 4 and said he wouldn't think twice about doing it again.
"It was more about doing the right thing," he said.
