When the floodwaters kept rising in her Palm Bay home Monday and calls to 911 brought no help, Brittany Grant turned to Facebook. Two teenage brothers from down the street saw her post, grabbed a borrowed kayak and a paddleboard, and went to get her.
Grant and her young son had climbed onto their kitchen counter to escape the rising water as heavy rain flooded homes and streets across Brevard County. She waited there for hours with her son and their three dogs, unable to get help through official channels.
Her neighbor’s teenage sons, Lucas Marshall, 17, and Jonah Marshall, 15, didn’t wait around. Jonah told ClickOrlando he acted without hesitation once he knew a family was in danger.
“Because they needed help, and they were in trouble and danger, so [I] just didn’t think about it and just went to help them,” Jonah Marshall said.
Lucas called the rescue “nerve-wracking a little bit,” and said he kept Grant’s son calm by talking to him during the trip out.
“So I was just asking him, like, ‘OK, what’s your name?’ I was like, ‘How’s school going?’ I was like, ‘This is a weird day, isn’t it?'” Lucas Marshall said.
Lucas added that he and his brother were simply in a position to act. “It was good because, like, we’re physical and able to do it, so [we] might as well,” he said.
Grant credited her neighbors, not the system she tried first, with getting her family out.
“The community came together and saved us,” Grant told ClickOrlando. “If it wasn’t for them, I don’t know how we would have gotten out.”
The flooding that trapped Grant’s family turned deadly elsewhere in Palm Bay the same day. Joshua Bennett, 34, died after his vehicle became trapped in rising water. His wife, Stacy Petit Bennett, told WESH 2 News he reached her by FaceTime as the water closed in around his car.
“He called me on FaceTime, and he was just crying, like, ‘I don’t know what to do, I don’t know what to do,'” Stacy Petit Bennett said.
Fox News Digital reached out to Grant for further comment.
