Exclusive | Quick-thinking daughter, 10, saves dads life after bloody mishap in raging river: I was helpless and hopeless

A heroic daughter saved her badly bleeding and paralyzed father’s life the very moment he thought he was going to die after a freak diving accident into a treacherous Louisiana river, police said.The father-daughter duo went to the Bogue Chitto River to kayak and look at softshell turtle eggs near the town of Bogalusa on the afternoon of June 18 when Michael Painter, 46, nearly lost his life, he told The Post.“I’ll tell you what bruh,” Painter said.

“She saved my life, if she wouldn’t have did what she did, I wouldn’t be here right now,” the father said of his 10-year-old kid in a Wednesday night interview.Painter, an offshore oil worker, explained that his daughter Carson loves to visit a spot on the river where softshell turtles lay their eggs.She had just convinced him to buy her a kayak so they paddled there together. It’s also a fun place to do front flips off the bluff, Painter said. “Well I being the 46 year old trying to be the cool daddy, I said ‘watch this!’ I took off down the hill and I’m fixing to do a front flip,” he said.At the last second, he said, he lost his footing and drove his head straight into a pile of big, jagged rocks laying along the bottom of the river. Initially, Painter thought he was swimming to the surface.

The water was only a few feet above his head.He was confused. “I can see the surface of the water and it’s not even a foot away but I’ll tell you, it might as well had been 100 miles away, man, and I’m drifting down the river.

I can feel my heels dragging along the bottom.” That’s when he realized he was paralyzed.Painter had broken a vertebrae and bruised his spine. “I was helpless and hopeless,” he added.The whole time Painter thought he was swimming his arms were just dangling uselessly by his side, he recalled.

“I can see the blood in the water all around me, man, but that’s the least of my worries.I’m thinking I’m paralyzed.”At first Painter’s daughter Carson,...