Jesse Hernandez a 13-year-old boy who was stuck in a sewer for 12 hours has been rescued by emergency services LA officials report.
In an interview with NBC News he stated “I was just praying to God to help me and to not die,
You could just hear the water running through. You couldn’t see anything.”
Jesse fell into the sewers on Easter Sunday, he was on an outing with his family at Griffith Park, one of the largest urban parks in the United States, when he slipped off with some of his cousins to go and explore an abandoned building.
While playing in the house the boys were jumping on wooden boards when a plank broke, sending Jesse plunging 25 feet (eight meters) down a sewer pipe around 4:30 pm.
A massive rescue effort was launched involving more than 100 firefighters, police and sanitation workers.
At 4:00 am Monday morning, sanitation workers lifted up a manhole cover and found Jesse looking up at them, the Times said.
He had traveled about two-thirds of a mile (over one kilometer) from where he fell into the sewer.
“This young man rose like Jesus,” Bryant Jones, a city sanitation manager, was quoted as saying by the Times.
Jesse was taken to hospital, decontaminated and released.