A group of teens and kids were attempting to take a selfie Monday evening when they fell through thinning ice in a Central Park pond near 59th Street and Central Park South. Two skateboarders passing by said they heard and saw the boys fooling around on the ice when it gave way. The two men rushed to the pond, jumping to help rescue the kids, who were struggling in the frigid water. “I look over, I saw six heads just trying to get to the shore,” one of the skateboarders, Bennett Jonas, told NBC 4. “The back one was probably a good 20 yards from dry land.” A total of seven were pulled from the half-frozen pond, all 15- and 16-year-old males, though a boy as young as 10 was among the group. At least six people were treated for hypothermia at local hospitals.
Everyone had been pulled to safety when the FDNY arrived, though divers searched the icy pond — estimated to be about 18 feet deep in its middle — for about an hour as a precaution. “Conditions were very murky, they didn’t have a lot of visibility down there. They were working off of a 50-foot rope so they did cover a lot of area,” FDNY Deputy Chief John Schof said. “With this thaw that we’ve had, going out onto the ice is not a good idea.”
