Grant Batty jovial after escaping death

Press, 21 January 1986, Page 1

Grant Batty jovial after escaping death

PA Auckland Grant Batty, a former All Black, was sitting up in bed in Auckland Hospital last evening chatting happily to his wife, Jill, after almost dying in a swimming pool on Saturday afternoon. Mr and Mrs Batty are believed to have been at the Auckland home of a friend and former All Black fullback, Joe Karam, at the time.

A business partner of Mr Batty, Mr Owen Hick, said that Mr Batty had swum several lengths' of :the Karams’ pool, then decided to do five more underwater. Towards the end of . his last length he stopped and dropped to the bottom. “He just seemed to stop and they (the others at the pool) just thought that he was lying on the bottom fooling around,” Mr Hicks said.

“Then they realised that something was wrong, jumped in, and pulled him out unconscious.”

Mr Hicks said Mr Batty had joked yesterday that he would be back at work today. While declining to confirm that the accident had occurred at his place, Mr Karam said last evening that it had been touch and go whether Mr Batty survived, and that his recovery was quite remarkable. He expected Mr Batty would be released from hospital later , this week. In a statement on behalf of Mrs Batty, Mr Karam said ' Mr Batty was talking to her last evening. •'

"He was chatting away in his normal, jovial way,” he said.

The Battys, up from Tauranga, had earlier visited another former All Black colleague, Bryan Williams, who, like Mr Batty, played on the wing. Mrs Lesley Williams said: “We got a terrible fright when we heard the news — we had seen them only a few days earlier.”