A 10th grader from Song Ma High School in Son La Province, northern Vietnam jumped into a river to rescue three schoolgirls from drowning last week.

The boy, named Lo Quang Vinh, said that he was nervous and scared of drowning himself.

"I reassured myself that if I waited too long, they would drown," the 10th grader recounted. 

"I then jumped into the water to take them out to safety.”

The People’s Committee of Song Ma District in the province commended Vinh for his heroic actions and awarded him a certificate for his bravery on Thursday.

At noon on April 23, a group of nine schoolgirls, aged 12 to 14, ventured into the Ma River in Chieng Khoong Commune for bathing.

While bathing, Lo Thi Kim H., Ha Kieu U., Hoang Thi L., and Hoang Thi T. fell into the deep water.

As they could not swim, they struggled and cried for help.

At the same time, Vinh heard the sound and instinctively jumped into the water to save the victims.

After pulling three of the victims out of the water to safety, he returned to rescue the last girl, but she could not be found.

“I dived into the water and looked for her in vain. I was short of breath, so I swam ashore and called others to search for her,” Vinh said.

Rescuers discovered her body at 3:00 pm on the same day after rescue efforts.

In related news, a fourth grader saved two 12th graders from drowning in Gia Lai Province in the Central Highlands region. He was commended and praised for his bravery on Thursday.

While Kpa Nguyen, a student at Nguyen Ba Ngoc Elementary School in Kim Tan Commune, Ia Pa District, was playing on a rice field on the afternoon of March 28, he discovered two other boys had fallen into a river.

Nguyen quickly jumped into the water, grabbed the victims, and took them to a bank of the river.

Like us on Facebook or follow us on Twitter to get the latest news about Vietnam!