It was a freezing night on January 22. A father of two young girls, Jon Paul Dowler, 52, got lost on a dark, dead-end road and drove his SUV into Lake Macatawa in Michigan. He saved his children in the sinking car by opening the car trunk. The two girls were miraculously able to swim to safety in the freezing cold water. Dowler didn’t make it.
The SUV plunged into the lake at Jenison Avenue, a quiet suburban street whose dead-end leads right into the lake.
Police speculate that Dowler saved the lives of his eight-year-old and ten-year-old daughters by opening the SUV’s back hatch using the trunk switch inside the car.
The girls were able to swim to shore at around 2 am and huddled together in their wet clothes on a porch on a property near the lake. The girls saw lights on a Christmas tree at the house and hunkered there until the homeowner, Kevin MacLeod, found them in their wet clothes with no shoes.
Ottawa County Sheriff’s Office Lieutenant Eric Westveer said that Dowler tried to break the windows of the car, but was unsuccessful and drowned.
The girls told a deputy that they huddled together throughout the night to keep warm because they saw the survival technique on TV.