A Tavistock woman has described how she jumped into the River Tavy in the town to help a woman trapped in her car after witnessing a car plummeting from Crowndale Road into the river.

The woman, who works at Crelake Residential Home, in Whitchurch, was outside Tavistock Primary and Nursery School waiting to collect her daughter on Tuesday afternoon when she saw a car driving from Crowndale tip towards Tavistock shoot off the road and plunge about four metres into the river.

As another witness called police, the woman handed her coat and phone to a stranger and jumped into the river – concerned that others, possibly children, could be trapped in the car.

She said: “It was my little one’s fourth birthday and I was in front of the gate of the school waiting to go and pick her up and we just heard a loud noise and when I turned around I saw the car jumping into the water.

“There were three or four us trying to see what was happening and I heard a noise like somebody was trying to get out of the car, banging on the window and in that moment I was crazy enough to jump into the water. I just thought that it might be a child or somebody in danger.”

Leaping down four metres, she ended up beside the car talking to the female driver, trying to make herself understood through the glass. She couldn’t open the door because the car was resting on the bank at water level.

“The lady in the car was quite cold and I was trying to reassure her. I asked her if she was alone, did she have any children in the car? and she said she was alone. In five minutes, water started to come into the car. I was up to my waist in the water. The water was coming up higher and higher. We were waiting ten to 15 minutes for the fire brigade and I was trying to reassure her, saying ‘you are fine, somebody is coming, you are not alone. In the end the fire crew came. They had a ladder and two people came down. After that somebody told them to go as they were there now.”

“After she was rescued by the firefighters she said thank you to me, she was ok.”

She herself was suffering from extreme cold, having been in the water for so long, but was wrapped in blankets from the clinic beside the primary school as she waited to tell police what had happened.

Several days later, she said she still has scratches and bruises. She said it had been a spur of the moment decision to jump in to the water, some four metres below the level of the road.

“I was there the moment it happened and I was thinking of my little one and I was thinking about kids, if they are inside what are they going to do?” Now, my husband said you didn’t think, but in that moment I didn’t know how many people were in the water.”