The Mobile Police Department in Alabama has developed a drone rescue kit that can deliver a floatation device to swimmers in distress, and help stabilize them until a swim team can reach their location. What makes this “Float Responder” aquatic rescue drone even more special is the fact that it has been designed to honor the memory of a first responder who died during a surf rescue earlier this year.
Baldwin County Sheriff Deputy Bill Smith died from accidental drowning while attempting to save a teenager in the Gulf of Mexico on June 6. After handing over a portable flotation device to the distressed teenager, Deputy Smith got rolled into a dangerous surf and taken to the bottom. When two jet skis arrived at the scene with Gulf Shores police and the US Coast Guard to assist in the rescue, they found Smith, 57, “floating on the top of the water.”
Also see: Drone captures teen’s heroic rescue of mom and son caught in powerful North Carolina rip…
