INDIANAPOLIS -- At a ceremony Friday night, a community honored a man who died last week saving his daughter from a retention pond.
Balloons were released into the sky in memory of Anthony Burgess Jr., a man who showed no fear in rescuing 3-year-old Amina Garrett from a vehicle that went into a retention pond Sunday.
Divers and rescuers were called to a pond on Fluvia Terrace after 4:30 p.m. Witnesses told police that the father had stopped to talk to someone and left his 3-year-old in the vehicle. The child hit the gear and shifted the car into neutral, rolling it into the pond.
Garrett was at the vigil among the crowd.
"We're going to let her know that her dad was a true hero that he sacrificed his life to save you," Anthony Burgess Sr. said.
Family and friends gathered at the intersection of 38th Street and Arlington Avenue -- the neighborhood that Anthony grew up in. There were tears for the loss of life, but there was also pride that a man who did not know how to swim died after saving his little girl.
The balloons to remember him were not just any balloons, they were birthday balloons for the father who would have turned 25 years old on Friday.
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