Hero recalls passed-out teen in sea
A Northlander who saved a family from drowning says the image of an unconscious teenager floating in the surf at a remote Ngunguru beach will stick with him forever.
But Alistair Neumann, 32, now living in Wellington, doesn’t consider himself a hero. The painter-decorator said that title belonged to the 16-yearold girl who “sacrificed herself to save the others” during the dramatic rescue on January 14.
“She was exhausted from keeping the boys up and out of the water. She sacrificed herself to keep them alive.”
Neumann was in the last week of his holiday at Papaka when the event unfolded.
About 3pm, the father of two had settled under a gazebo with a cold beer when he heard a distressed woman.
“She was yelling, ‘Help, help, my mum and the kids are drowning’. I put my beer down thinking, ‘What the hell?’”
Neumann and friend and coworker Hamish Eyles, 26, from Wellington, made a 30-second bolt to the shore of an unpatrolled beach near the Ngunguru Sandspit.
“When I got to the water the first thing I saw was a 4 or 5-year-old floating in the swells. I grabbed him by the back of his togs and heaved him like a sack of potatoes into the shallows,” Neumann said.
Eyles caught the conscious child and quickly put him on the shore where Neumann’s partner, Lissa Dunn, 29, started first aid while also directing emergency services to the location over the phone.
A woman in her 50s — the children’s nana — was pulled from the surf by Dunn.
The unconscious figure of the
16-year-old girl was then spotted by Neumann, who rushed her to the shore.
He placed a finger in the unconscious girl’s mouth to help her vomit seawater which cleared her airway and roused her, he said.
“She kept trying to go back to sleep so we worked hard to keep her awake by talking to her.”
Neumann next pulled another teenager, a boy, to shore and used fire blankets from their van to keep everyone warm until Northland Rescue Helicopter paramedics arrived and took over.