Onlookers rescue 2 teens from car that crashed into bay

A speeding car careened into the frigid water at the San Leandro Marina Sunday afternoon, a crash that would have almost certainly been deadly had it not been for two onlookers who jumped into the bay to fish out the driver and passenger, according to police.

Just before 2 p.m., a 1990s Nissan Maxima was going more than 60 miles per hour on Monarch Bay Drive when the driver hit the curb, lost control and smashed into the rocks at the edge of the bay. The car flipped over and landed upside down in the water, trapping both occupants, who were believed to be in their teens.

The two observers quickly jumped into the water to save the pair. They used rocks to smash the driver’s side window, then swam through the dark murky water to locate the driver and passenger.

“In my opinion, looking at the tides and the currents and how deep the water was, they easily saved those teens’ lives,” said San Leandro police Lt. Ted Henderson.

Joseph Keppard, a 53-yearold personal trainer and minister at Evergreen Missionary Baptist Church in Oakland, was meditating near the water when his reverie was interrupted by a loud screeching. By the time he looked up, the Nissan was in the water.

“I just kicked off my shoes, threw my phone down and proceeded over there to the rocks barefoot,” Keppard said Sunday evening. “It just unfolded real quick. I didn’t want a parent to end up there having to identify their kid’s body. That was what was going through my head.”

Keppard, who is 6 feet 4 inches tall, said the car landed in deep water. He spent several minutes in the bay, searching in the dark for the teenagers and then pulling them out. At one point, others on the scene said there was a third person in the car, so Keppard dove down into the wreckage feeling in the darkness for another body.

“The water was up to my eyes, and you could feel the current pulling,” said Keppard, who served a decade in the Army. “The whitecaps were going pretty good. I didn’t have time to think about myself. I just wanted to get those guys out of there.”

It turned out there were only the passenger and driver.

“I was trying to find the third person when everyone started hollering, ‘We got everybody, we got everybody,’ ” he said.

The other good Samaritan was Benjamin Sebastian of San Lorenzo, Keppard said.

Police say that the driver and the passenger had been attending a private event at the marina, and witnesses said they appeared to be intoxicated. As soon as they were safely on dry land, they jumped into two cars — a Jeep Cherokee and Hummer, believed to be driven by people who were at the same party — and fled the scene, police said.

Police have not identified the pair and don’t know if the person to whom the car is registered was in the vehicle.

“They were able to get in those cars pretty quick and leave the scene,” said Henderson. “By the time we got there, everyone was gone.”

Keppard, who frequently works out and meditates at the marina, said that the people he rescued didn’t thank him, but he didn’t mind.

“I wasn’t even focused on any of that — it was more so about the lives,” he said. “They were kids — I’m tired of hearing about kids dying. Me being a minister, I do too many funerals.”