Teen Survives Being Stranded in Ocean Off Georgia Coast for 10 Hours, Reveals He Was Talking to God While Waiting for Rescue
A 19-year-old tourist visiting Georgia's St. Simon Island who was swept off towards the Atlantic Ocean miraculously survived being left alone for 10 hours.
Speaking with WJAX-TV, Louisiana teenager Blake Spataro said that he was just sitting in a shallow part of the water on Tuesday, but he then found himself being pulled towards the ocean due to a rip current.
According to Spataro, he was shouting to ask anyone for help, but nobody heard him. However, he was determined to be found. "I didn't want to die out there. I was talking to God the entire night," he stated.
Get Our Latest News for FREE
Spataro spent almost 10 hours by himself in the ocean while his family and the US Coast Guard searched for him in the waters. While waiting for rescue, the teenager said that he would float on his back whenever he gets tired.
When he was about to give up, he finally saw lights from a Coast Guard ship nearby. This encouraged him to push towards the waves and was able to make it to the shore near a golf course located several miles from St. Simon Island.
According to Spataro, he just thought that he was too young to die, and he did not want to end his life right at that moment.
His mother, Janice Dansby Spataro, who was not with him and his father when they went on a trip to Georgia, said that she suspected that he was in the water and was not lost on land when she received a phone call to inform him about the incident.
"I knew he was in the water. I felt it," Janice Dansby Spataro said in a Fox News interview. "I prayed to God all night long. I was praying, and I reached out on social media to ask for prayer because there's power in prayer," she added.
The good news about the teenager's rescue was shared by Glynn County Emergency Management Agency Director Jay Wiggins through the agency's Facebook page.
