Man pinned underwater by mower returns home

CAPE CORAL, Fla. – The man who got pinned underwater when his lawnmower toppled over him into a canal last week has been released from the hospital.

“I guess I’m the miracle lawn guy, I don’t know,” James Bates said in an exclusive interview.

It’s no telling that James Bates is lucky to be alive and back at home less than a week after his seemingly lifeless body was pulled out of a canal in Cape Coral. James says, he doesn’t remember anything.

“I don’t know what happened. But where she told me where everything was positioned, I can picture what would happen.”

James has been mowing the lawn near that canal for the last six months and says he knows every nook and cranny, every twist and turn. So when he woke up to hear he had been in a freak accident, he could only imagine what went wrong.

“If those wheels were turning forward, sliding backward, when those wheels hit the seawall, it went right over,” James said.

“He was sliding down and he probably put the things forward and when he did it flipped, like he did a wheelie,” his wife, Dolly, said.

Now James is battling an infection in his lungs, but somehow has not broken bones.

“One little bruise and one scrape,” James said.

Miraculously he was able to write on a piece of paper to ask what happened, and able to talk to tell his family his one and only craving– a Baconator from Wendy’s.
“They took the trachea thing out and, “I love you, I want Baconator,'” Dolly said.

“She stepped out of the room, came back and said, ‘can I have a fry?’ Too late it’s gone!” James said.

James says lawn mowing is a lot like riding a horse– if you fall off, you’ve got to get back on. He plans on returning to work as soon as possible.