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Sheriff’s office: Good Samaritans save drowning victim in Stafford Co.

First responders in Stafford County, Virginia, were called to a drowning on Falmouth Beach on Tuesday, but when they got there, the victim was breathing on his own. Now, they’re making sure to credit the good Samaritans who saved the man’s life.

The Stafford County Sheriff’s Office said in a statement Wednesday that when their deputies and fire and rescue personnel got to the beach a little after 5:30 p.m., the 21-year-old whose drowning they were supposedly responding to had been revived by Darius Burr, an off-duty member of the U.S. Secret Service.

Burr helped pull the man out of the water; he was unresponsive at the time, the sheriff’s office said.

Burr then performed CPR with the help of another beach-goer, whom the sheriff’s office didn’t identify, and after a few compressions, the man was breathing on his own.

The drowning victim was taken to a hospital as a precaution, the office said.

“The Stafford sheriff’s office would like to commend Mr. Burr and the other good Samaritans for their actions in preventing a tragedy,” the statement said.

31 years later, convicted murderer Jose Rodriguez-Cruz pleads guilty to killing estranged wife

The estranged husband of a woman who went missing more than 30 years ago has pleaded guilty to second-degree murder, closing one of the oldest cold cases in the D.C. area. Jose Angel Rodriguez-Cruz, 54, pleaded guilty in Stafford County Circuit Court on Monday morning in the killing of 28-year-old Marta Haydee Rodriguez, who was last seen walking to a bus stop in Arlington, Virginia, in April 1989.
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