(LEADWOOD, Mo., AP) – An eastern Missouri man is being credited with saving the life of a 12-year-old boy, jumping into a flooded river to pull the child to safety.

The Park Hills Daily Journal reports that the child, from Leadwood, Mo., is hospitalized in critical but stable condition after being rescued Sunday evening from the Big River.

Witnesses and police say the boy and two others were trying to cross a bridge that was flooding. The boy fell into the water near a culvert pipe and the force of the water sucked him into the pipe.

He emerged from the other end of the pipe and was floating down the swift-moving river when resident Robert Salsberry was able to grab the boy, pull him to a small island and perform CPR.