Fishermen save drowning man by hooking sweater

According to WNBC, officials say a 66-year-old man, whose name has not yet been released, fell off the Canarsie Pier in Brooklyn, New York, into the Jamaica Bay Saturday afternoon.

The fishermen quickly cast a line, hooked his sweater and managed to keep his head afloat.

A witness identified the two men as Frankie and Ray, telling the NewYork Post that "hey couldn't pull him out of the water, but they kept him from going under. If they didn't use the hooks, he would have drowned. He was 230 pounds and the current would have taken him out."

According to WCBS, "Once on the scene, firefighters jumped in, put a sling on the man to swim him to safety aboard an NYPD boat. You can see here in this video the man being pulled out of the water on a stretcher as a crowd watches."

An NYPD detective told NewYork Daily News the man initially wasn't breathing and had started turning blue. He started to improve after receiving oxygen.

The man was taken to a nearby hospital where he was last listed in critical condition.