When he saw people running toward Bear Creek on Friday afternoon and heard that a 4-year-old boy was drowning in its cold and swollen currents, Abdulkadir Mohamud dashed four blocks, jumped a 3-foot fence and dived in.

Looking back on the attempt to save his neighbor, Mohamud said he couldn't describe even the temperature of the water. He just knew there was a boy's life to be saved.

"I was running past people, tearing my jacket and sweater off," the 16-year-old Mayo High School student said Saturday. "When I got to the river, there were people just standing there. Then I saw the boy's red jacket."

Police said the creek, which runs through Rochester, was swollen because of melting snow and rain the day before. Mohamud said he can't remember how the water felt as he swam for the boy.

"Some weird stuff happened to me yesterday," he said Saturday. "I was numb."

The child, Abdullahi Said Elmi, was in critical condition Saturday evening at St. Marys Hospital in Rochester. Police Lt. K.C. Reed said he was sure that if not for Mohamud, the boy would have died at the scene.

Mohamud said that when he finally reached the boy, he was completely underwater, his eyes open. His red jacket, caught on a tree branch, was the only thing keeping him from being swept away.

Trying to reach the nearest bank, Mohamud grabbed the boy with one arm, but Abdullahi began to slip. "I had to take him with both arms and just paddle as hard as I could," he said.

Mohamud pushed the child onto the river's west bank, across from where he dived in, but couldn't pull himself from the water at first. Although tired, he said, with a second attempt he pulled himself out, and he began to perform CPR on the boy.

"I couldn't feel any pulse at all," Mohamud said. "But after a few minutes, I felt a soft, soft one."

Mohamud, who said he swam competitively in the Netherlands when he was 12, said he worked for 15 minutes before police relieved him.

Because the two were on the creek's west bank and surrounded by woods, police had to cross from the east side, as Mohamud had done.

Officer Don Bray, anchored by a rope and wearing a life jacket, lost the battle with the strong current and had to be pulled back, Reed said.

Officer Ed Fritz crossed farther upstream, where the creek wasn't flowing as rapidly, and took over for Mohamud, Reed said.

Police on Saturday estimated that the boy had been under water for three to five minutes before Mohamud reached him.

But Mohamud, who said he was once saved from drowning by his uncle in Somalia, said he isn't any kind of a hero. He said he isn't any different from the police who worked to save Abdullahi or the firefighters who used rescue ropes to carry the boy back across the water to waiting ambulances.

The boy was taken to St. Marys Hospital, where Mohamud went to see him after the rescue.

"I'm just like everybody else," Mohamud said. "And at least he has a heartbeat."