Hero saves trapped boys
Andrew Field waded into a freezing cold river in the dark to rescue three children from an upside-down car as their father lay dead. The 17-year-old apprentice diesel mechanic was driving home to Greymouth from Reefton on Sunday about 8.20pm when he noticed debris on a bridge.
He stopped to investigate and saw that a car was half-submerged in the Otututu/Rough River after having crashed through the wooden railings of the bridge on Atarau Rd.
He called the police, then drove his ute down into the riverbed and through the swift-flowing river to get to the car, which was near the far side of the water.
The car was upside down and badly damaged. Field could see that the driver was trapped and appeared to be “already gone”.
He got out of the vehicle into water which was up to his waist and “f***ing freezing”, he said.
“I walked around to the back window and yelled, ‘Is anyone in there.’ I heard a voice saying, ‘Help us.’
“I grabbed a rock and smashed a side window.”
He then helped the three boys, aged 11, 9 and 6, out of the smashedup car.
“I threw them on the bank and chucked them in the ute and drove out.”
Meanwhile, Ikamatua farm worker and married father of two Ryan Davy was on his way home from the local hotel when he saw lights in the riverbed and went to investigate.
He arrived about five minutes after Field.
He drove the children to his nearby house, where they stayed for two hours.
“I just took the kids. They were freezing from being in the water.
“I chucked them in a hot bath
and waited till the ambulance took them.” Davy said the three children, all boys, were badly shaken. “The oldest boy was all scratched up but there was nothing obviously wrong with him. He was the worst out of them but still all right. “The young fella that got the kids out. He was the one that saved those kids’ lives.” Asked about his heroic act, Field said: “People say I should feel like a hero, but it’s hard to feel like that when you know the boys are going to grow up with no father.”
He said the children would have been at risk of drowning in the car had rain fallen in the river’s headwaters after the crash.
Had they managed to escape the wreck, the fast-flowing river, which joins the Grey River about 3km from the bridge, could have swept them away.
The boys’ father, Tamati James Rae, 32, of Kaikoura, was found dead when emergency services arrived at the crash site.
People say I should feel like a hero, but it’s hard to feel like that when you know the boys are going to grow up with no father. Andrew Field
He and his children had been visiting family in Hokitika at the weekend and were on their way back to Kaikoura when they crashed on Atarau Rd, north of the Pike River Mine turnoff.
Senior Sergeant Brent Cook, of the Greymouth police, said the children were taken to Grey Base Hospital for observation and were later released into the care of family members.
Police were thankful for the actions of Field, who had saved the lives of the children, and Ryan, who gave them comfort and shelter after the crash.