A five-year-old Beaumont boy is back home with his family after nearly drowning in an icy dugout.

Brett Herman was pulled out from the dugout by his best friend's mother, Melanie Ochitwa, after falling through the ice last Friday.

Ochitwa performed CPR on the unconscious boy until paramedics, firefighters and the RCMP showed up and helped. They had the boy breathing again before STARS airlifted him to the University Hospital.

Senta Herman said Wednesday her son is doing fine and remembers everything that happened to him. "He said he doesn't want to do that again."

Brett was at the Ochitwa home playing with his friend, Brayden, also five, when the boys decided to check on the thickness of the dugout ice for a "skating party."

"The funny thing is they have been told a hundred times never to go to the dugout. Melanie is very strict about that," Herman said. According to boys with them, Brayden stayed close to the edge, hanging onto an exposed root, while Brett ventured further out. One of the boys told the other not to follow him if the ice broke. When the ice gave way Brett plunged into the icy water.

Brayden ran home and told his mother, "Brett fell into the pond."

Ochitwa called Brett's name and then called 911 when he didn't answer. She raced to the dug out and spotted an item of the boy's clothing in the water, and then his body under the ice.

Ochitwa jumped into the frigid water to reach Brett, but he was too far away. She had to dive under the ice to grab him.

Herman said she and her husband are grateful to Ochitwa and they hold no hard feelings about what happened. "It was a freak accident and boys being boys."

Herman said she knew her son was going to be fine when the first words out of his mouth, when his tubing was removed, was a request for his Halloween loot. "I laughed when the nurses told me that." Brett was released from hospital Tuesday, but his parents have decided to keep him home from school until next Monday.

"He said he didn't want to go because he doesn't want to answer a lot of questions about what happened," said Herman, adding she wants to thank everyone who helped rescue her son.