An off-duty RCMP officer is being credited with saving a mom and her two-year-old daughter after their car flipped into a water-filled ditch on Highway 17.

Const. Aaron Jabs, of the Integrated Homicide Investigation Team, and his wife were southbound on the highway when he saw a distraught six-year- boy climbing out a ditch at 52nd Avenue.

He stopped and the boy directed him to a car over the bank, where he mother we frantically trying to rescue her two-year-old daughter who was still in the submerged vehicle.

Due to the overgrowth of vegetation and low light conditions at the time, the vehicle was described as being "virtually invisible" to passing traffic.

Jabs rushed down the steep ditch and into the water.

"We were stuck inside and I wasn't sure how we'd get out," says the boy's mother, identified as Alyse.

She said she told her son to get out the rear door and go for help.

The three were taken to hospital.

Only after her release from hospital did Alyse learn that it had been an off-duty RCMP officer that had rescued her daughter.

"I had no idea he was a police officer. I couldn't have gotten my daughter out without him. I don't know his name, but I'd love to meet him again to thank him and his family for what they did for me and my children," she said.

Jabs said he did what any off-duty RCMP officer would do in the same situation. "I made sure they all got out of the car as quickly as possible, called 911, and then kept them all safe until emergency crews could arrive."

Lower Mainland District RCMP Sgt. Peter Thiessen credits the fast action of the off-duty officer and the proper use of child seats and seatbelts as the main reasons why there weren't serious injuries as a result of the crash.

"Extremely violent levels of force are involved whenever a vehicle rolls or flips over while traveling at highway speeds. If vehicle occupants aren't wearing their seatbelts and if child restraint systems aren't properly installed when this occurs, an occupant ejection is almost inevitable with serious injuries or death as a result," he said.

"The little girl here might have ended up unconscious and under water if she had not been properly secured in her child seat or if the vehicle position had shifted while submerged. Proper use of the child restraint and a fast extraction from the vehicle were crucial to the little girl's safety in these circumstances."

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