Man drowned as he tried to rescue 5-year-old boy in lake

A53-YEAR-OLD man drowned trying to rescue a young boy after he fell off an inflatable dinghy, an inquest heard.

Phillip Robert Gooderham was out on Llyn Tegid, Bala, on May 28, 2020, with two young children who were in his care.

The inquest into his death heard how Mr Gooderham and his partner of 35 years, Rosemarie Connolly, had travelled to Bala with a five-year-old boy and a two-yearold girl.

Mr Gooderham, a college lecturer from Aston Park in Deeside, bought an inflatable dinghy to go out on to the lake with the children while Miss Connolly stayed on land.

But at around 4.20pm Miss Connolly heard three boys, who were also at the lake, shouting that Mr Gooderham and the boy had gone into the water.

In her statement, which was read out during the inquest, Miss Connolly said: “When we arrived the lake was calm with very little wind. There were three teenagers fishing. I was on the phone when I heard the three boys shouting ‘your boys are in the water.’

“I was taking a phone call in an alcove at the time, but I ran out and could see the dinghy was around 30ft out and Phil and the young boy were separated from the dinghy by about 6ft but they were both above the surface of the water.

“One of the three boys ran to the road to grab a life ring as neither

Phil nor the child had a lifejacket on.

“When he returned, another one of the boys went into the water with the life ring with the third held on to the rope, but he then ended up getting into difficulty himself.

“I entered the lake with a tree branch thinking it would keep me afloat.

“Phil was face down in the water and I grabbed the young boy who was with us and brought him to shore and wrapped him in a towel.”

She later told how she’d made attempts to get to Mr Gooderham, but she kept going under.

She told the inquest: “By this point the dinghy had drifted with the girl still on it and I couldn’t see her.

“I put the boy in the car and we drove down to the next layby where a workman helped me get over a gate and luckily she was there, still inside the dinghy, around 100 metres from where it happened.”

In the meantime one of the three boys called the emergency services but by the time they arrived Mr Gooderham had already been in the water for around an hour.

Mr Gooderham, a father-of-one who had a history of asthma, COPD and Hodgkins disease, was taken to Ysbyty Glan Clwyd by road ambulance, but never recovered.

A postmortem examination revealed Mr Gooderham had haemorrhagic congestion of the lungs following the incident and died as a result of drowning.

Toxicological reports confirmed Mr Gooderham had no alcohol or drugs in his system.

Concluding the inquest, assistant coroner Katie Sutherland said: “During a day out at Llyn Bala [sic], the young boy in Mr Gooderham’s care was in the water and while trying to rescue him, he drowned himself.

“They were having a nice day out on a nice day and his death wasn’t intended, it was unexpected and more likely than not down to misadventure.

“It was a tragic set of events for the family, for the children. I am sure he will be terribly missed; he was young enough to have plenty of life in him and what occurred is very unfortunate and tragic.”

Speaking after the hearing Miss Connolly said: “He was a devoted family man and selfless to the end.”