By Susannah Sudborough
masslive.com
WORCESTER, Mass. — The legacy of Worcester Police Officer Manny Familia, who died in 2021 while saving a group of teens from drowning, continues on today through the successful use of the “Manny Tube” by first-responders throughout Massachusetts and beyond.
Enmanuel “Manny” Familia was 38-years-old and a five-year veteran of the Worcester Police Department when he jumped in a pond at Green Hill Park to save a group of teens from the water on June 4, 2021. Two of the teens were rescued, but Familia and a 14-year-old boy died during the incident.
In the wake of Familia’s death, his family started the Manny 267 Foundation — a non-profit that helps provide water rescue training and equipment to police departments nationwide.
One of the organization’s biggest initiatives has been donations of the Manny Tube — an easily grabbable flotation device that can be thrown to people struggling to stay above the surface of the water.
The Manny Tube came in handy once again on Sunday afternoon in Orange when police and firefighters were called upon to rescue a child who had fallen into the Millers River, according to Orange police.
Around 1 p.m., first-responders were dispatched to West River Street for a report that there was a child in the river who was holding onto an object to keep himself afloat, the Orange Fire Department wrote in a Facebook post. They soon discovered that a young child and his brother were fishing when one of them slipped and fell into the water.
When police arrived, they found one brother lying down on a wall in the river, trying to use a fishing pole to reach his brother, who had fallen into deeper water, the fire department wrote in a subsequent post. The first two officers to arrive at the scene managed to wade across the river to reach the child and used the Manny Tube during the rescue.
The officers and the two boys were eventually able to walk back to the riverbank together, the fire department said. The child who’d fallen in the river was evaluated by paramedics at the scene, who determined that he did not need to be taken to a hospital.
The Manny Tube was available for the officers to use thanks to a donation from the Manny 267 Foundation, Orange police said in a Facebook post. The tube has since been “stored in the rear of every line cruiser owned by the Orange Police Department .”
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