500-Pound Man Rescued After 12 Hours In River

He would have been saved earlier but people keep rolling him back into the water.

Crews rescued a Pine City, Minn. man from the St. Croix River at Fox Landing, near Grantsburg, Wis. after he spent 12 hours stuck in the water. Authorities said the man's weight was a mitigating factor in his delayed rescue.

Hard to get tow trucks into the water.

At about 8:15 p.m. Monday, authorities received a call of someone with a medical condition needing assistance.

The call was pretty much this. "There's a fat guy drowning in the river."

According to the Pine County Sheriff's Office, a group had gone tubing on the river when Martin Rike's tube went flat about two miles south of Fox Landing.

You know it's time to diet when you can deflate an innertube riding on water.

After attempting to get out of the water and walk back, Rike, 39, began having chest pains. He had also slipped on irregular rocks, injuring an ankle and a knee.

This is a great example of not thinking things through before doing it.

Dispatch said Rike weighed about 500 pounds and said his weight was a factor in how long it took crews to rescue him.

Eventually the water just threw him onto the shore because he was hurting the river's back.