‘This can’t be the last moment of their lives’: Teen reveals how he and his friends saved a grandmother and her grandson at West Beach

A group of teens have been hailed as heroes after they undertook a dramatic rescue of a grandmother and her grandson caught in a rip at a popular Adelaide beach. Video: 9News

A teenage boy has told of the moment he and his friends saved the lives of a grandmother and her grandson who were floundering in a rip at West Beach.

Kai Nixon and his friend Cruz Campbell, both 14, were out surfing after school when they saw a woman waving to them.

Unbeknown to them, the woman’s grandson was drowning, after falling from rocks and becoming caught in a rip about 20m from shore.

Kai and Cruz, both year 9 students at Henley High School, sprung into action.

“It was like something out of Bondi Rescue,” Kai told The Advertiser.

“I had to stay calm because this can’t be the last moment of their lives.”

A boy was drowning, after falling from rocks and becoming caught in a rip about 20m from shore. Picture: 9 NEWS

The teen paddled out to the struggling boy and tried to get him on his surfboard and but became stuck on a rock by the boat ramp in the March 5 rescue.

“We were getting smashed by the rocks,” he said.

But while Kai and Cruz were saving the boy, her grandmother had ventured out into the water and become caught in the rip herself.

Two other teen boys, Louis Kempster and Riley Kellock, who were also surfing at the time, joined in to save the grandmother and pull the boy to safety.

“We worked as a team,” Kai said.

The teenager, a long-time member of the West Beach Surf Lifesaving Club, said during the ordeal he feared for his own life.

Cruz Campbell, Kai Nixon, Louis Kempster and Riley Kellock worked together to save the boy and his grandmother. Picture: 9 NEWS

“I could feel myself being pulled out,” the West Beach local said.

Kai was forced to get out of the water for his own safety.

“I jumped out as the little boy was being pulled out.”

When he was out of the water, Kai called emergency services to help the grandmother.

After a struggle which Kai said lasted about half an hour, the woman managed to get close to the rocks, and the boys jammed a surfboard between her and rocks.

“It felt like seconds but it was hours,” Kai said of the ordeal.

“It’s what all the years of surf lifesaving have done for me.”

Kai’s mother Tricia Nixon said she was proud of her son, who had faced a battle with leukaemia last year after being diagnosed in 2023. 

“He just takes everything in his stride and nothing fazes him at all,” Ms Nixon, a support worker, said.

I’m incredibly proud because they acted on the spot.”

Ms Nixon raced to the scene herself when she didn’t receive a phone call from her son, as she usually would have, when he finished surfing.

“I had no idea where Kai was,” she said.

“We didn’t know anything and it was a bit of panic until they let us know the boys were OK.”

Ms Nixon said it was Kai’s “natural instinct to try to help”.

“If they weren’t there it would have been a completely different story,” she said.

Emergency services were called to the scene and treated the grandmother and her grandson.

Both were uninjured.

Originally published as ‘This can’t be the last moment of their lives’: Teen reveals how he and his friends saved a grandmother and her grandson at West Beach