MINNEAPOLIS (WCCO) — The swirling, raging, violent storm water should have killed 8-year-old Ken, who was swept six blocks underground through a culvert.

Playing with his sister near a puddle, the water proved too powerful on Wednesday as it sucked him in. He then took on a terrifying trip beneath the side streets outside of Duluth.

“I heard screaming like I’ve never heard before,” Gordon Marshall said.

Marshall was checking on the flooded creek behind his home. Then he saw a boy bleeding.

“It was enough blood to scare you,” Marshall said.

Meanwhile, rescue crews popped manhole covers as a mother panicked.

“She was hysterical,” a witness said. “(Screaming) My baby! My baby!”

“I tried to talk to him,” Marshall said. “But he was so cold, so panicky, so scared.”

Investigators think Ken rode almost a mile on that dark, horrifying waterslide before he was shot out, and wandered around in the woods right near Marshall.

“It was scary,” Marshall said. “I’ve got 10 grand kids. It caught me for a minute.”

Ken went to the hospital, but he just had some cuts.

City crews popped manhole covers and dug up rocks covering the culvert, but the strength of the water just ejected the boy in exactly the right spot.