Father drowns while saving child at western Minnesota lake

Updated: 12:30 p.m. | Posted: 10:40 a.m.

A man drowned while saving his 3-year-old child from the waters of a western Minnesota lake on Saturday night.

The Becker County Sheriff's Office reported that it happened at Long Bridge in Detroit Lakes just before 8:30 p.m.

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Witnesses said the 3-year-old fell from the bridge into the lake.

"The child's father jumped into the water to help the child (and) began to struggle while keeping the child above water," the sheriff's office reported in a news release.

Bystanders brought the child to shore, but the man went underwater and didn't resurface.

The father was identified Sunday as 31-year-old Christopher Franklin Nicholas Schultz of Frazee, Minn.

Becker County sheriff's deputies, Detroit Lakes police officers and EMS personnel began searching for Schultz, with help from the county dive rescue team and an angler at the scene. He was located about 40 minutes later and transported to a local hospital, where he was pronounced dead.

The child was treated for non-life-threatening injuries.