Friends tried to pull boy from arroyo

ALBUQUERQUE (KRQE) - The friends of the Albuquerque teen swept down rushing arroyo waters said they tried to rescue him, but the was water was flowing too fast.

Junior Nieto and Darian Erdman said the water wasn’t very deep, and they didn’t think it was going fast when the group of friends let curiosity get the best of them. Seconds after their friend R.J. Lees stood knee deep in the water the fun turned to horror.

The current literally swept Lees off his feet. The Eldorado High School student was rushing down the arroyo.

(Read Lees' account of his experience.)

“It took him out,” Nieto said. “It was going like 30 miles per hour, and it was maybe a foot and a half deep.”

Erdman said one of their other friends reached for Lees’ hand but had to let go.

“Adrian got a hold of his hand, but Adrian almost got pulled in,” Erdman said.

Then it quickly got worse. Nieto said just below a nearby bridge the arroyo dropped and the water started moving faster.

“When he got to that drop, his facial expressions completely changed,” Nieto said. “It went from joy to horror.”

The boys started yelling for help. Esequiel Acosta was working further down the arroyo and heard their screams.

“Some guys started yelling, saying, 'Hey. There's a guy in the ditch. Call 911,'” Acosta said. “So I let my supervisor know.”

Acosta raced to the arroyo’s edge and saw Lees float by.

“He was kind of panicked; you could see it in his face,” Acosta said.

Acosta said Lees kept moving downstream, and by the time he ran around a bend in the arroyo the teen was gone.

“We went over there to see if maybe he held onto something, to the wall, but he wasn't there,” Acosta said.

Lees was finally pulled from the arroyo about seven miles from where he went in by rescue crews. He was scraped up but alive. Acosta was shocked when he heard the news.

“I got pretty surprised by that,” Acosta said.

The friends said it was a lesson learned and they won’t be playing around ditches or arroyos anymore.