Storm Henk: Hero couple rescue three-year-old girl and mother from car caught in flooding

A hero couple saved a stranded three-year-old girl and her mother as their car sank into a swollen river amid Storm Henk.

Liam Stych and his partner Tia Draper were out for a walk in Hall Green, Birmingham, when they saw a Fiat Punto sinking into a torrent.

Qucking-thinking Mr Stynch, a roadworks engineer, climbed onto the bridge and pulled the child out of the vehicle.

He handed the child to Ms Draper, who is five months pregnant, before rescuing the mother and securing the car to the bridge to stop it from sinking.

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He said: “The current took the car and it hit the bridge. At that point, she [the woman in the car] said: ‘I’ve got a child in the car’.

“I climbed on that [the bridge] and I got the baby out. The car was then moving at every movement that she was making.

“I went to my van and got a ratchet strap, secured the car to the bridge, and in the process of doing that got the woman out at the same time.”

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Mr Stych, speaking to the BBC, described himself as a human being with good instincts but insisted that he was not a hero.

Storm Henk – the eighth of the 2023-24 storm season – battered the UK on Tuesday, bringing 94mph winds and heavy rain to large parts of the UK.

During the storm, a man in his 50s died when a tree fell on his car in Gloucestershire.

Several major roads were closed due to flooding, some train lines were blocked by fallen trees, and hundreds of flood alerts and warnings were issued across England, Scotland and Wales.

More bad weather is expected later this week, with the Met Office issuing a yellow weather warning for rain covering the entire south of England from midday on Thursday until 3am on Friday morning.