The man suffered from hypothermia after the rescue after spotting the baby, who was so still he first thought it was a doll
Todd Zobrist, from Illinois, USA, spotted the headlights of a car submerged in a lake on Thursday morning and instinctively knew there must be someone inside.
After realising he didn't have time to wait for the emergency responders to arrive, he stripped off his shirt, socks and boots and jumped in to the below-freezing water, swimming 75feet to the car.
Arriving at the car, Zobrist looked inside the vehicle and saw something in the back seat which he initially thought was a doll, but turned out to be a three-month-old baby boy.
Even more heroically, he performed CPR on the child on the roof of the vehicle until he coughed up water. Zobrist then swam back to shore with one arm, carrying the boy in the other.
"When I got halfway there I was thoroughly thinking to myself, 'This is a terrible decision and I really need to just turn around and go back to the dock because I'm going to get myself in a lot of trouble,' Zobrist said at a news conference Friday.
"At that point, though, I was committed, I was already wet, I was already cold."
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The paramedic, who works for the Highland Fire Department, has two sons of his own. He was taken to hospital to be treated for hypothermia but insisted he wasn't a hero, saying "It was just right place, right time."
The body of his mother was found hours later in the lake. She is thought to have died from 'environmental exposure and drowning', abc reports .
Earlier the same morning, the baby's father - her ex-husband with whom she was still living - had been found dead at the family home with a gunshot wound to the head.
The house had been set ablaze and the couple's six other children had all managed to escape, running to a local Walmart to seek help.
A gun was found in his ex-wife's vehicle in the lake.
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