Chch youth drowns in Waimak. River

Press, 27 January 1988, Page 1

Chch youth drowns in Waimak. River

A Christchurch youth drowned in the Waimakariri River last evening during an after-work swim. The name of the youth, an apprentice butcher, aged 19, was not available late last evening. He and two of his workmates were swimming about skm upriver from the Old Main North Road after 6 p.m. when they got caught in a strong current which pulled them under the water. One of the survivors, Adrian Marr, aged 20, said that they had got caught in the current so quickly it had dragged them under before they realised what was happening. “It took you under and held you there. I fought my way up once, went to take a breath and was pulled back under a second time,” he said. Mr Marr, a former surf life-

saver, said that when he was able to pull himself to the surface again he looked round for his companions. “I saw Mark about a metre away and he was okay. When I looked for (the dead youth) I saw him once, then I could only see his shorts, then I just lost him,” he said. Mr Marr estimated that he was under the water for about a minute while the youth who died was under for about seven minutes. “The people on the shore saw my hand go up the first time and thought I’d been under for about 30 seconds. It really tired me but I managed not to panic,” he said. The body of the dead youth was pulled from the water about 50 metres from where the three had been swimming. Efforts to revive him were unsuccessful.

"It was unbelievable that he didn’t come up. He was the strongest of all three of us, he just must have panicked,” Mr Marr said. The three youths had been swimming near a popular pool in the river and there were about 20 people in the area at the time. Mr Marr said he believed they had been caught by a “freak” current. “It was just one of those things; if we had swum a metre in either direction we probably would’ve missed it,” he said. Senior-Sergeant T. J. Williams said the swimming accident was a reminder of how hazardous the river could be. The river was unpredictable at the best of times, especially for swimmers. The police wished to thank the jet-boater who helped them recover the body from the riverbed, he said. __