One father’s late-night attempt to recover his children’s toys turned into a terrifying underground ordeal that nearly ended in tragedy.
A Trussville, Alabama, man is recovering after being pulled into a storm drain and swept hundreds of feet underground during severe flooding on the night of June 27, 2025. Drew Owen, a resident of the Peppertree neighborhood, was chasing his children’s soccer balls in his yard when the rushing floodwaters dragged him under.
Drew had lived in the neighborhood for five years and never imagined that a routine summer storm would put his life at risk. On Friday night, heavy rain quickly overwhelmed his yard, sending several of his children’s soccer balls drifting toward U.S. Highway 11.
As he stepped into the chest-deep water to retrieve one of the balls, he didn’t realize he was near a hidden ditch. It was dark, and the area was entirely submerged. “I got sucked down the drain pipe. I’m 6’2, 235 lbs and it sucked me up like a twig,” Drew said.
Before he knew it, he was pulled into a large underground pipe that runs beneath the highway and nearby railroad tracks — an estimated 100 yards in total.
The force of the current kept him completely submerged, and the experience left him disoriented and unable to breathe for approximately 30 to 45 seconds.
“I was just praying that it was going to drop at some point soon, because I didn’t know if it was, the pipe was going all the way down Highway 11, or it was going to drop two minutes from now. I honestly was saying my goodbyes,” Drew shared.
Naturally, at the time, his thoughts turned to the people he might never see again. “First was that my kids weren’t gonna have a father, and that my wife wasn’t gonna have her husband. Then secondly, my dad’s funeral was the next day. I’m literally gonna die the day before my dad’s funeral,” he expressed.
Eventually, he was expelled from the drain’s other end and managed to grab a tree to stop himself from being carried farther. “My guardian angel my dad that help me [sic],” he believes…