Hero siblings pull injured boy from pool
Two quick-thinking siblings helped prevent a 9-year-old boy from being added to New Zealand’s growing drowning statistics, and have been praised for their quick actions.
Manaaki, 14, and sister Ayla-Ra¯, 10, noticed a boy floating underneath the water when they were playing at Whakata¯ne Aquatic and Fitness Centre on Wednesday.
“We were swimming, jumping off the boards doing manus, and we just saw blood floating in the water. I saw him floating at the bottom so I went to tap him, see if he was conscious, and there was no response so I pulled him up to the surface,” Manaaki said.
Ayla-Ra¯ was at the shallow end of the pool when she heard her brother’s cries for help.
“I ran over to him and saw this kid, so I just started holding his head out of the water, while he [Manaaki] ran for help,” she said.
A scuba diving group training close by in the pool came to their assistance and began performing CPR.
The siblings were unsure how the young boy had injured himself.
Manaaki and Ayla-Ra¯’s parents believe the boy would have died had Manaaki just carried on walking past. “We are proud, and just glad they were there and capable of helping,” dad Rawiri Stewart said.
“[The victim] was in the deep end, right down the bottom, and not all kids can get down there and pull someone up so for him [Manaaki] to be able to do that, was lucky.” The injured boy had reportedly gone to the outside pool with a group, but when the group returned to the inside pools, he was left on his own.
A St John Ambulance spokesperson said the patient was in serious condition.
Whakata¯ne Hospital did not respond to queries about the boy’s condition by press time.