GALVESTON, Texas – Four men are alive thanks to a good Samaritan who saved the fishermen after their boat capsized 100 miles southeast of Galveston.
"He pulled me into the boat by my pants, I instantly grabbed a hold of him, I could have kissed him in that second, I was just happy,” said Derrick “Captain Chop” Greene.
Greene said he and three other men were fishing commercially when the strong storms and choppy waters took them by surprise and flipped over their boat.
“We sat there for maybe 10, 15 minutes without the life raft and then finally the life raft actually wanted to work, until that point I was about 70 to 80 percent sure we weren't going to come home,” said Eric Gonzalez, Greene’s deckhand.
The U.S. Coast Guard said Friday around 12:30 p.m. it received a satellite distress signal, or an Electronic Position Indicating Beacon.
About 15 minutes later, it received another phone call from a boater saying he received messages through the boat crew’s SPOT Satellite Messenger saying they, “need help.”
“They knew I was out in the area, close enough to hear the call,” said Mike Regan with Line Check Charters in a phone interview.
Regan was near Captain Greene and heard their radio call for help.
He said the weather took him by surprise also, and that he believes his purpose for being out there today was to save the other men.
“They’re lucky somebody was out there,” said Regan.
The Coast Guard said the weather was too bad at the time to immediately put up a helicopter to search.