Four mates save drowning boy using CPR skills for the first time
FOUR young friends managed to save a drowning four-year-old thanks to a love of the TV show Bondi Rescue and the memory of a Year 4 lesson.
Pride of Australia
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FOUR young friends managed to save a drowning four-year-old thanks to a love of the TV show Bondi Rescue and the memory of a Year 4 lesson.
The boys and their families were on their annual trip to a Central Coast caravan park during the October school holidays.
Zac Brown, 13, Jaime Privett, 13, and brothers Ben and Patrick Whitehouse, aged 13 and 11, walked into the pool area to find Adam Al Kayal face-up sinking slowly below the surface of the water — his jacket still on, eyes slightly open and mouth in a smirk.
“Pat saw him first. We thought he was mucking around,” Jaime said.
Jaime waved his arms in Adam’s face but the boy’s expression didn’t change, so Zac hauled him out by the jacket.
Ben called for help but, while adults rushed over, they did not take any action — perhaps wondering if it was all some kind of joke. So the four friends swung into action.
“We were under pressure,” Patrick said.
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They began checking Adam’s pulse and Zac started compressing his chest, a skill he learned through a combination of watching Bondi Rescue “every day” and a lesson from his Kings Langley Public School Year 4 teacher, who taught him to keep the rhythm of CPR in time with the Bee Gees’ hit Stayin’ Alive.
“I don’t know how I remembered that,” he said.
“It just came back to me.”
The boys rolled Adam onto his side and pried open his mouth — it was clenched shut and foaming — to clear his airway.
Then Adam vomited and came to and began crying, just as his father Bill appeared to scoop him up and run to an arriving ambulance.
For Emma Ghorra, Adam’s mum, the boys’ heroism was more than instinct and bravery, it was an act of God for a family that had already lost a daughter to brain cancer and had a stillborn son.
“Adam has been our gift,” she said.
“And I don’t think what happened that day was luck. They were meant to be there. It wasn’t Adam’s time.”
She left her son in the children’s pool in the care of his father and father-in-law for “about three minutes”, while she returned to their cabin for a cup of coffee.
She believes he must have thrown his toy into the nearby adult pool while his father was distracted and fell in trying to retrieve it.
Luckily for him the four young mates walked in just in the nick of time.
“I love those boys. They are my heroes,” Ms Ghorra said.
“Whenever I look at Adam I think of them.”
Adam was back at Ocean Beach Caravan Park the next day — and back in the water.
“I don’t want him to be scared of the water,” Ms Ghorra said.
Jaime’s mum Kath said the families would keep in touch.
“I was in complete awe that they (the boys) had acted so quickly, being so young,” she said.
“We are so proud of them.”
Zac, Jaime, Ben and Patrick have been nominated for a Pride of Australia Medal in the group category.