When a West Middlesex High School student went swimming with his cousins in New Castle, he didn't realize he would go home a hero.

Cash Buzard, 14, of Yankee Ridge Road, Lackawannock Township, pulled his 2-year-old cousin Shane Marshall to safety July 22 from a swimming pool at a relative's home.

"I was with my little cousin Anthony in the pool and we were throwing a ball and playing around when I turned around and saw an arm sticking up from under a blow-up raft," said the soon-to-be ninth-grader. He immediately grabbed that arm, pulling Shane from the water, which was about 4 feet deep.

"He felt like he was dead already," Cash said. "He was just hanging there, he wasn't moving. He was blue. I yelled for Terri and said he wasn't breathing."

Shane's grandmother, Terri Marshall, was barbecuing and thought an older cousin was watching the kids in the pool.

"He (Shane) must have jumped in with no one knowing it," she said, adding that she thought he was wearing inflatable water wings.

After being smacked on his back, the 2-year-old coughed up water and started breathing. He was hospitalized for two days at Jameson Health System after doctors found water in his right lung.

Mrs. Marshall and Cash's father, Dan Buzard, think a lot of the teen.

"I'm pretty proud of him," his dad said.

"It was great what he did. He seems like a good kid," added Mrs. Marshall, who had only seen Cash, a second cousin, a few times.

Saving Shane means a lot to Cash, who nearly drowned at Shenango River Lake when he was about 5 years old.

"My brother and I were throwing in sticks and wading out to where we threw them. I started to go under, and my dad was right there in a boat, but the motor was on and he couldn't hear me. But some woman jumped in and saved me," Cash said.

When Cash saw Shane's arm sticking out of the water, he said, "I knew that I got to pull that arm out of the water, because of whoever it was. I didn't care who it was. I wanted to stop him from drowning."

"That's my worst fear," he said. "Drowning and dying."