LOCALS IN THAI CHAOS
THAILAND CHAOS: Newtown dad, daughter tried to save Aussie who fell 80m while parasailing
A NEWTOWN father and daughter are still in shock after witnessing the death of an Australian man who fell while parasailing in Thailand.
Renowned businessman Roger Hussey died in a Thai hospital just hours after falling about 80m into the water while parasailing at a popular tourist beach in Phuket earlier this month.
Sharing the beach that day earlier this month and among those who attempted to save the Perth father were Geelong’s Peter Murrihy and his daughter, Keeley, 21.
Back home and in the comfort of their kitchen the pair explained that what unfolded on the beach that day was “utter chaos”.
“We’d been there nearly two weeks and we were having a swim out on the beach,” Peter, a former prosecutor and councillor, said.
“I think I’d watched every paraglider go up, there were jet skis on the beach as well,” he said.
“We were just watching and I reckon he was probably 70 or 80 metres off the ground. And he just fell. It was like he just dropped out of the sky.”
Peter and Keeley both have life- saving experience and they said instinct immediately kicked in. “We got out of the water and ran down to where a few people had dragged him in,” Keeley explained.
“It was complete chaos — everyone was yelling and screaming in different languages.”
Peter said Keeley took full control of the situation.
“We got him up on to the sand and she was telling people, ‘Right, this is what we’re going to do’,” he said.
“There was this one guy from the paraglider team that had some kind of incense and he kept rubbing under his (Mr Hussey’s) nose.
“There was a Brazilian woman yelling about the ambulance and the paraglider bloke just hit her, it was crazy.”
Despite the bedlam, Keeley said she had Roger speaking, his neck secure and was writing down his allergies to pass on to ambulance staff when they arrived.
“It got to the point where I yelled and told people to just get away. He
was so white at this stage, he was purple lips, ghostly white,” she said.
“He was speaking to me. At one point he even wanted to get up and I just had to say ‘I’m really sorry you’re not getting up, I have to treat this as a spinal’, because at the time I couldn’t tell if there was internal bleeding.”
She said the ambulance took about 25 minutes to arrive and when it did she had to readjust the neck brace the paramedics had put on him.
Peter said Mr Hussey seemed to be in good spirits at that stage.
“He gave me a wink before he left, and said ‘I’ll be right mate’.” “I still see that,” he said. Peter said they followed Mr Hussey to the hospital, “just to check on him and have a chat”, but when they arrived the scene was not what they had been expecting.
“We walked in and we were just shown straight through. His wife was sitting there saying ‘He’s not good, he’s not good’,” Peter said.
“I wondered over to this open corridor and they’re performing CPR on him, just a couple of metres away.
“We just stood and watched and then we heard the main doctor say ‘Cease CPR’.”
Peter said Mr Hussey’s wife, who was Thai, had trouble speaking English and had not yet met her husband’s children in Australia, so it was he who had to make the difficult phone to tell them.
“I had to call the daughter in Melbourne on her Dad’s phone,” he said. “She answered the phone, ‘Hi Dad’. It was the most difficult phone call I’ve made.”
The pair said the parasailing company was quick to blame Mr Hussey, saying he had unclipped himself or had fallen from his harness.
“We took the harness off at the beach,” Peter said. “So that’s just untrue.”
Keeley said she was shocked that when they sat down, Mr Hussey’s wife asked if her husband had done it on purpose.
“For someone who’s just lost her partner to be questioning whether he’d unclipped himself . . . he did not look scared, he looked so happy to go up, he was fine,” she said.
Keeley and Peter believe there weren’t nearly enough safety precautions in place and Mr Hussey’s death could have been prevented if there had been. It’s understood two of the parasailors were charged with reckless conduct causing death after the incident.
Back in Newtown, Peter said he has remained in touch with Mr Hussey’s wife since the incident but remains angered by the whole situation.
“I was just glad to get out of the country,” Peter said.
“I’ve sent an email to the embassy since we’ve been home, about the whole thing and my concerns, but haven’t had a reply.”
He said their family would not be returning to Thailand and had a warning for those choosing adventure activities overseas:
“There hasn’t been a day yet where I haven’t thought about what happened. You need to choose which country you do this kind of thing in. ”