"I was up at 3 a.m. this morning. I couldn't sleep."
From their balcony in Windsor, George and Vera Oglan noticed a man on the ice along the Belle Isle shoreline at around 5 p.m. Wednesday.
They tell CTV News, what looked like a laid-back excursion turned into a horrifying episode within 60 seconds.
George: "He just kind of tested the ice a little bit" Vera: "He was walking leisurely and then all of a sudden he started running. Then when he got to where the water is ... he put one foot in and down he went." George: "It was ice though, when he went on it."
The Oglan's say the man started struggling, went under, surfaced once, struggled some more, then went under a second time.
"We didn't see him anymore and it was very unsettling, so I felt really bad and called Windsor police right away," she says.
Oglan was transferred to Michigan State Police and the U.S. Coast Guard sent out an ice rescue team.
Windsor Harbour Master Peter Berry recommends people think twice before walking out on the Detroit River.
"If you're in the water you're survival is 15 to 20 minutes tops before you're gone before the hypothermia will take you," he added.
Berry says the nearest ice rescue team is in LaSalle.
"There is no ice rescue in the City of Windsor through Windsor fire or Windsor police of the [Canadian] coast guard for that matter," he says.
He says the odds of LaSalle's Ice Rescue Team pulling someone out of the Detroit River in Windsor aren't good.
"That's counting on their volunteers getting in a timely basis to you," he says. "The water is always moving underneath that ice, so no ice is safe ice."
The U.S. Coast Guard says Michigan State Police will continue their investigation, but the search was called off Wednesday night.