Melinda Snyman, NSRI St Lucia station commander, said: At approximately 15h00, on Friday, 10 April, our NSRI St Lucia duty phone, along with several of our NSRI St Lucia crew members, received multiple eyewitness reports of a drowning in progress at Main Beach, St Lucia.
At the time of the initial calls eyewitnesses indicated that they still had visuals of a man appearing to be in distress in the surf zone.
Our duty crew, including rescue swimmers, responded immediately – directly to the beach, while crew responded to our NSRI St Lucia station 40 rescue base to prepare an NSRI rescue craft to be launched.
On arrival on the scene we found a man in the water using an NSRI pink rescue buoy and a surfboard (a long board). He had reached the male casualty and he was bringing the casualty towards the shoreline through the surf zone.
2 NSRI rescue swimmers entered the water and assisted the man to rescue the casualty, an adult male, to the beach.
On the beach NSRI medics and paramedics medically assessed the man but sadly he was declared deceased by paramedics.
Police attended at the scene where the body of the man was taken into the care of Police and Government Health Forensic Pathology Services.
It appears that while an American tourist group were visiting the beach a group of the tourists were taking a swim and they had reportedly ducked under an incoming wave. After the wave passed it appeared that the man, age 69, from the United States of America, surfaced lifeless in the water.
Their local tour guide, a Good Samaritan, grabbed an NSRI pink rescue buoy and a surfboard (a long board), that he found on the beach nearby, and he went into the water to go to the casualty man’s aid while bystanders raised the alarm.
On reaching the man in the water he found him to be unresponsive and lifeless in the water. Using the NSRI pink rescue buoy and the surfboard he loaded the man onto the surfboard and started to paddle towards the shoreline when he was joined by NSRI rescue swimmers who assisted to get the man to the beach.
Condolences are conveyed to family, friends and their fellow tourists.
Police have opened an Inquest docket.
Family are in the care of authorities.
Mronstr
Fun South African Fact: Despite the country’s status as a democratic republic, the Province of KwaZulu-Natal has a monarchy, specially provided for by the Constitution. Goodwill Zwelithini kaBhekuzulu is the King of the Zulu Nation, has 27 kids and 6 wives and lives, literally, like a King!
Firecracker
Iceland: You have two cows. They freeze to death.