Teens rescue classmate in flooded car

LYNNWOOD, Wash. – With water pouring in, Gatlena Lat struggled to keep his head above water, trapped in the seat of his car that had spun out and flipped into a swampy ditch.

“I was thinking, ‘I’m going to die and that’s it,’ ” Lat said. “I couldn’t do anything.”

Fortunately for Lat – a 20-year-old Sudanese refugee – some Lynnwood High School classmates left school at the same time Tuesday.

Alex Nguyen, 16, was one of them. Nguyen peered inside Lat’s flipped Nissan Maxima that was embedded in mud and could only see the bottom of Lat’s jeans and his sneakers.

Nguyen and classmates Justin Glanville, Jessica Anthony, Derek Bride, Tyler Elliott and other bystanders worked desperately to pry open the driver’s side just wide enough to pull Lat’s skinny 6-foot-3-inch frame from the car.

By the time Snohomish County sheriff’s deputies arrived, Lat was out of the car, sheriff’s spokeswoman Rebecca Hoover said.

The students didn’t realize it was a classmate.

“I didn’t know it was Gatlena … until we pulled him out,” said Bride. “When I saw it was him, I thought, ‘Oh my God.’ He’s a friend. I was scared and horrified. It just turned into a whole different thing. I just wanted him to be OK.”

Lat had to flee his homeland when rebels attacked his village in 2000. The idea that Lat could have escaped a civil war only to die in a ditch just wouldn’t have been right, said Mary Dill, Lat’s foster mother.

“I’m just real grateful for those kids,” she said.