Homeless man that saved woman doesnt consider himself a hero! MANCHESTER — When Shawn Dionne heard the splash, he knew a body had hit the water. The 45-year-old homeless man was passing time under the Granite Street Bridge last Thursday, when shortly after 9 a.m. he was unwittingly cast as a Christmas angel, preventing a possible fatality and helping a distraught woman to safety days before the holiday. After walking her to a waiting ambulance, he was gone, according to rescue personnel alerted by a 911 call. “He kind of disappeared in the midst of the whole thing,” District Fire Chief Hank Martineau told the Union Leader at the time. Martineau, shown a photo of Dionne, said he indeed looked like the river rescuer. He reappeared on Tuesday for an interview under cover of the parking deck near the now-closed World Sports Grille in the shadow of the Granite Street Bridge, the icy Merrimack River flowing fast only a few feet away. “I was just thankful I was able to be there,” Dionne said. “I don’t consider myself a hero. It was instinct. It’s something I’ve done my whole life. I’ve always been there to help people out.” Lisa Mazur, outreach director at Manchester Christian Church, was volunteering at a community breakfast on Saturday when she asked another volunteer, Mark Ploss, if he’d seen the story in Friday’s Union Leader about the river rescue. “Here’s the guy,” Ploss said, introducing her to Dionne, who reluctantly agreed to the parking garage interview arranged by Mazur. Dionne says it was pure happenstance that brought him to his spot by the river on that Thursday morning. He said he was on his way to the day center for the homeless on Central Street, when he decided to return to the place he calls home. “I did a 180,” he said, “I don’t know exactly why. I felt like I had a bunch of angels or something turned me back around to come down here.” He found an abandoned pallet, which is good bedding material when you are homeless, and tossed it down the embankment. “I went down to pick up the pallet when I heard a screech and a splash,” he said. “And the one thing I noticed was it sounded like a belly flop. I know that sound distinctly because I’ve done plenty of them.” He said he looked over his shoulder and saw a woman face-down in the water. “My first thought was, ‘Oh no, I hope she’s not dead.’ Then she bounced up and she was waist-deep in the water. I started talking to her to see what state she was in and how bad she was hurt. I couldn’t get to her from where I was at, so I told her to lay on her back, point her head toward the shore, and kick.” Dionne followed along the riverbank as the current carried the woman, said to be in her 30s, to the south end of the mill buildings housing Southern New Hampshire University offices and other business. “I kept up with her until she came to a branch at a beach-like area. I knew that spot because I had scoped it out and I knew what I was going to walk into,” Dionne said. “I told her to grab onto that branch and hold on.” He stripped down to his underwear, jumped into the freezing water and helped her to the shore. “By the time I got dressed, I saw two cops up on the bridge and two coming in from the ballfield,” he recalled. “All four of us brought her up to the ambulance.” An unlikely set of circumstances brought Dionne to the river’s edge that day. Born in Manchester, he had left the city with his family as a young child. He spent the past 10 years in Florida, working with his uncle in a handyman business. Eventually, Dionne said he just decided to return to the place where he was born. “Home calls you back,” he said. “I’d had enough of the South.” He said he doesn’t plan to be homeless indefinitely, alluding to a settlement of some sort. “I’m waiting for the paperwork to go through. I don’t see myself as homeless. I kind of look at it this way: I like being outdoors. I think of it as camping until things look back up.”Mazur calls him a free spirit, but said he’s also a man of faith who believes in destiny. Whether it was fate, destiny or pure chance, two lives intersected in the rapid current of the Merrimack River last Thursday, and both will never be the same. Dionne had this holiday wish for the young woman now recovering from her leap into the unknown.“I’m just thankful that you’re alive,” he said. “God bless you; Merry Christmas; and I hope you’re doing better.”
Posted on: Wed, 24 Dec 2014 14:22:28 +0000
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