DOUBLE TRAGEDY

Timaru Herald, Volume CXLIII, Issue 20929, 7 January 1938, Page 6

DOUBLE TRAGEDY

BROTHER AND SISTER DROWNED SWEPT OUT TO SEA BY CURRENT By Telegraph—Press Association CHRISTCHURCH, January 6. A boy was swept out to sea and drowned at the boat harbour, Sumner, about 2.45 pun. to-day, and his sister, who was playing in the water near where he disappeared, has not been seen since a few minutes before the tragedy. It is feared that she also has been drowned. The names of the children are:— Ronald Joseph Thomas, aged 12j. Irma Thomas, aged 11. They were members of a family of five girls and a boy, of Harry Leslie Thomas, gardener, 12 Draper Street, Richmond. Dragging was carried out up till 9 o’clock this evening, and the beach was patrolled at midnight, but the bodies had not been found. Further searches will be made early tomorrow morning.

Mr and Mrs Thomas and their family went to Sumner for the day early this morning and were picplcking under a tree beyond the lifeboat shed and slip. At the time of the tragedy Mr Thomas, who is recovering from a severe illness, was asleep by the tree and was not aware of what was occurring a few chains away. The two children, neither of whom could swim, were playing in slack water waist deep close by the training wall on the seaward side of the harbour, parallel with the main beach, under the surveillance of their mother. The boy, wno was bouncing a rubber ball, which skidded out- toward the end of the wall, was further out than his sister. s mother cautioned him not to go too far. He called out in reply, took another step after the ball and disappeared from his mother's sight in the current which, at low water, runs very swiftly past the end of the wall along Whitewash Head to the open sea. The mother, paralysed with fright, sav. him rise twice and then disappear before she had time to call her husband sleeping a few yards away. The girl was at the time some six yards from the end of the wall.

Alarm Not Promptly Given

Although there were a number of people about nothing appears to have been done for some moments. The alarm was not given until a child ran some 600 yards to the main beach and along it to the surf pavilion to find the beach patrol, Mr A. Simpson. The child could give only vaguest details, and Mr Simpson ran across to the boat harbour. Apparently some of the people on the main beach near the Clock Tower were aware of the tragedy, but no one seemed to think of calling the beach patrol, who was at the time fully occupied with watching the defined bathing area a full quarter of a mile across the water from the boat harbour.

When Mr Sffnpson arrived at the boat harbour he could get nothing coherent from the people nearby, nor, he said, did he get any help from some men who were there, so much so that it “seemed like a hoax.” It was at this time that the girt was first missed, a good five minutes after the boy had disappeared. Mr Simpson went to the end of the wall and dived repeatedly into the current which was running very rapdly on the surface. Searches along the bottom brought no result, although Mr Simpson continued his efforts for some time.