A man jumped into the Hudson after an eight-year-old. Then he could not get out either.

A city in upstate New York honoured four men on Monday for pulling an eight-year-old girl out of the Hudson River, in a rescue that came very close to needing a rescue of its own.

Amarys Lopez, who has autism, wandered away from a family gathering in Troy at about half past seven on the evening of Saturday 5 September. Her family went out looking for her and started knocking on neighbours' doors.

Michael Schnoop, a friend of the family, had an idea about where she might have gone. He thought she might have got through a hole in a fence that leads down to the waterfront, and when he went to look he found her in the river, holding on to a ladder set into the seawall.

"I didn't even think about it," he said. "I just seen her and just jumped in."

The wall

Having reached her, he could not get her out. Rungs were missing from the ladder and the seawall is high and steep, too much to climb one-handed while holding a child, so he stayed in the water and held on to her and waited for somebody to come.

Troy police officers arrived and heard the girl crying. Sergeant Marty Furciniti, Detective Evan Cioffi and Officer Paul Cellucci went to the edge and made a chain of themselves down the wall, each holding the next, until the man at the end could reach the water. They brought up the girl first and then Schnoop. She was not injured.

Mayor Carmella Mantello, who has kayaked on the Hudson, said afterwards that the tide had been kind to them. "If we were in high tide that little girl would've been slowed by the current," she said. "You cannot underestimate how strong the current is."

Monday

The city held a ceremony at city hall nine days later, with the mayor presenting certificates to Schnoop and to the three officers. It had been a hard summer for children in the Capital Region, and Mantello said the city had been looking for a reason to celebrate something.

"Truly, truly I call it a miracle on the Hudson in Troy," she said.

I didn't even think about it. I just seen her and just jumped in.Michael Schnoop