Baby boy plucked from the sea
I reached out and grabbed him by the arm, even then I still thought it was just a doll . . . but then he let out a little squeak. Gus Hutt
Afisher who pulled a baby from the ocean at Matata¯ Beach says it wasn’t the baby’s time to go. “As he floated past, I thought he was a doll,” said Te Puke’s Gus Hutt.
“So I reached out and grabbed him by the arm; even then I still thought it was just a doll. His face looked just like porcelain, with his short hair wetted down, but then he let out a little squeak and I thought ‘oh God, this is a baby and it’s alive’.”
It was simply luck that Hutt was there to save the 18-month-old, who had escaped from his parents’ tent at Murphy’s Holiday Camp and ended up in the water early on October 26.
Usually, Hutt heads straight out from the camp to fish from the beach, but that Friday he walked 100 metres to the left, towards Tauranga.
After returning to check his lines at 7.15am, he saw the baby.
“He was floating at a steady pace with a rip in the water. If I hadn’t been there, or if I had just been a minute later, I wouldn’t have seen him,” said Hutt.
“He was bloody lucky, but he just wasn’t meant to go; it wasn’t his time.”
Hutt’s wife, Sue, alerted the parents after the camp managers said they were the only campers with a baby.
“She ran to the tent and just shook it and asked, ‘where’s your baby — we just pulled one from the sea’ and the mother just screamed,” said Gus Hutt.
Emergency services arrived, with the Matata¯ Volunteer Fire Brigade treating the boy for 15 minutes before an ambulance took him to Whakata¯ne Hospital.
The baby had pulled the zip up on the parents’ tent as they slept and crawled down to the beach.
“[Later] I followed his tracks down to the beach and saw his little footprints in the sand where he walked in,” said Gus Hutt.
“It was about 15m away from where I had my rod, so he wasn’t in the water long. I must’ve just missed seeing him go in.”
The boy’s mother, Jessica Whyte, told Stuff being woken to the news he had been found in the sea felt like a sick joke: “I don’t think my heart [beat] from hearing that to seeing him. I don’t think my heart worked.”
The parents stopped by with the boy to thank Hutt before returning home to Matamata.
“He was wriggling, trying to get down to have a look at everything, he was just a lovely, cheeky little fella,” Gus Hutt said.
The fire brigade advised parents to ensure zips were out of children’s reach when camping.
A police spokesman told the Herald they had attended the incident and were not taking further action.