The Boy In the Septic Tank

MADISON WILLIAMS was studying in her bedroom in Dublin, Ohio, in August 2016 when the door burst open. It was her mother, Leigh Williams, with a horrific and incredible story: “A little boy fell into a septic tank, and no one can reach him.” Then she made this request of her 13-year-old daughter: “Can you help?”

- Andy Simmons

Madison and Leigh ran to a neighbor’s yard, where they found the boy’s distraught mother and other frantic adults surrounding a septic tank opening that protruded a few inches above the neatly trimmed lawn. It was 11 inches in diameter— slightly wider than a basketball— with a hatch that had not been secured. The boy, who was only two years old, had slipped in and was drowning in four feet of sewage inside a tank that was eight feet deep.

The men and women—who minutes earlier had been enjoying a party in a nearby home when they heard the boy’s mother scream— were dropping extension cords into the sludge, hoping the child would grab hold so they could pull him out.