Three girls rescued from car in river

Press, 9 May 1978, Page 3

Three girls rescued from car in river

PA Oamaru Three Motueka girls had a lucky escape from death when their car plunged into the Waianakarua River, south of Oamaru. One girl was underwater for 15 minutes.

The girls were travelling south on State highway 1 when their car left the road at a corner.

Had a group of people from a Roman Catholic girls’ camp not seen the accident, the three would have drowned. When the rescuers reached the scene, the three girls — Susan Chilton, Sandra Mulholland, and Sheila Cahill, all aged 21—w r ere trapped in the car, unconscious, and underwater.

A Waitaki Boys' High School teacher, Mr R. Lewthwaite, who was taking a group of girjs from the camp for a sail across the river from the accident scene, raced 400 m to his car., “I stalled it twice; I was pushing too hard,” he said later. “We had to drive about 1J miles round there and all the time we were hoping someone had stopped. It seemed like an eternity.

“I reached down into the water but I could not get to the car doors. I rocked the car and managed to get the first girl out. that time someone else ' had arrived and he knew rescue breathing. “The second girl was in a front seat and we managed to get her out as well.” Mr Lewthwaite didn’t see the third girl in the back. “I was just getting back out of the car when I looked in the front seat and I saw a hand floating up. “It must have taken 10 minutes to get the first two out and about 15 minutes that the third girl was under water. 1 couldn’t get her out. She was strapped in and we could not free her. “I screamed out for a knife. The two minutes it took to get the knife ... it took so long. “We gave her heart massage for half an hour; we gave her mouth-to-mouth for about 40 minutes. There was a doctor there and he told us to keep at it. “You have no idea what it is like to see them take their first breath after something like that. When she came round it was unbelievable.”