Phil Johnson was out fishing Monday night when he heard the screams.

"When we shut our boat down to fish, we could hear everybody yelling and we turned around and went back out there to it," Johnson said.

As he followed the sounds through the dark, Johnson came across the crash. A speedboat had slammed into a pontoon boat. People were everywhere.

The first man they came across was Paul Bennett, the man charged with causing the crash that killed two boys.

"(Bennett) told us he was OK and that he could get back in his boat and directed us to the pontoon boat," Johnson said.

13 people were on the pontoon boat when it was hit. Nine of them were kids.

Johnson tried to save 13-year-old Griffin Prince and his 9-year-old brother Jake.

"We couldn't locate him, so we pulled back over to the boat then to see what was going on there," Johnson said.

Johnson tried CPR on the 9-year-old, but it was too late.

"It had to be done. To try," Johnson said.

Griffin’s body still hasn’t surfaced. Search crews called things off again Thursday night. The search was expected to continue at daybreak Friday. Boats equipped with sonar technology have been searching the 100-foot waters of the lake every day since the accident.

WSB's Richard Sangster reports if the already-exhausted dive teams can't find Griffin's body Friday, they are planning to rest up for the weekend and will head back out Monday.

But Johnson wants it to be known that the man charged with being drunk and causing the wreck didn’t just run away.

"It wasn't a hit-and-run, by what people may think, that he left the scene immediately. He didn't do that," Johnson said.

Johnson says Bennett left sometime after rescue crews showed up.

"This is a horrible accident. I mean it's changed so many people's lives," Johnson said.

Johnson said it took rescue crews between 30 and 45 minutes to get to the crash scene.