Iggy Park honours life-saving heroism
TWO Ignatius Park College students have been recognised for their heroic actions saving a person’s life, in two separate cases.
Josh Ward, 17, was sitting around with friends at the top of Castle Hill on January 9 when the evening quickly became a date he will never forget.
Josh coaxed a 24-year-old man down from the cliff’s edge after realising he was about to jump.
“I heard some crying and then someone yelled out, ‘are you OK’,” he said.
“As soon as it happened it took three or four seconds to process what was going on and then I just clicked into a mode where I thought ‘there’s no way I’m going to let this man take his own life’, so I started talking to him at the same time I was dialling triple-0.”
Josh showed incredible maturity and compassion as he sat with the man talking to him until police arrived.
“I was trying to put myself in his shoes because I had never been in a position like that but I’m sure a lot of people have been,” he said.
“He was really upset … and I was just trying to connect with him as much as possible to try and build a relationship, even though I’d never met him before. But I needed to give him someone he could rely on.”
Josh said the significance of that moment wasn’t realised until the young man told him in front of police that ‘he’d saved his life’.
“It’s completely changed me. The whole idea of mental health sort of went over my head until then,” he said.
Year 7 student Coen Ross was awarded for his heroic actions when he was on his way home from a family holiday to Magnetic Island and noticed a man struggling in the water from his seat on the ferry.
Coen said he was certain of what he saw and quickly alerted his dad.
“The boat was fully under way and I just happened to look out at the right moment and saw him go over and under a wave, and he was waving his hand,” he said.
Coen said he has never spoken to the man, believed to be in his 70s, about his instinctual response that brought him to safety because “anyone would do it”.
The two boys were singled out in front of a packed-out school stadium and commended with a prestigious intra-school award known as the “Iggy Blue and White Malaria Award”.