David Hickey was enjoying a race in the afternoon along the edge of the Ottawa River on Wednesday when he noticed a shock in the water near Westboro Beach.
“I saw some splashes in the water. Then, when I took one of my headphones, I heard some shouts and there were a lot of people gathered next to the shore,” said Hickey, 32, to CBC on Thursday.
Someone was in trouble about 20 meters from the coast. Without stopping to consider his own safety, Hickey jumped into the water and swam to help.
When he reached the swimmers who fought, a younger man and a child, both had slipped under the surface.
Hickey, a physiotherapist who describes himself as “not the strongest swimmer” despite taking a basic lifeguard when he was a child, managed to grab the child and began to row back towards the shore.
Realizing that the man was still distressed, Hickey told him to cling to the child and then took them both to a safe place.
It was then that Hickey discovered that there had been a third person in the water: the child’s father, Rowell Navarro, 42.
Navarro was finally taken from the water, but despite the extensive resuscitation efforts, he was then declared dead in the hospital.
Dad ‘used all his final energy’
The youngest man, identified by the police only as a “member of the public of fast thought”, had jumped into the river to save the father and the son, and in doing so he had almost drowned.
The paramedics told CBC that they transported the 27 -year -old man to the hospital in stable condition.
“Three of us entered, but the father stayed in the water until the firefighters found him,” said Hickey. “Believe [Navarro] He used all his final energy to give his son to the other guy, and used all his energy to keep them awake until I could leave and help him. “
Hickey and other spectators waited with the child until the first to respond. The child was transported to Cheo “as a caution,” the paramedics said Wednesday.
Hickey said the river is quite shallow in that area until a strong fall not far from the shore.
“That’s where the current really becomes messy, so you can walk and one step later you are floating. And that’s where they got into trouble, I think,” he said.
On Thursday, passer -by Kevin Power, who has lived near 60 years, said the Ottawa River can be misleading.
“Going out to these currents with the rapids and so on, you can really throw yourself through a loop and surprise you and surprise you, and maybe that’s what happened yesterday,” Power said.
Mother thanks rescuers
Hickey said he remembered enough of his training to know that it would have been dangerous to return to the river to look for Navarro.
“I am happy to have been able to help and improve the situation, obviously. I don’t think there is anything else to help the father really at that time, I think he was too far,” he said.
Hickey said that since then he has exchanged some text messages with Amanda Laflair, Navarro’s wife and Madre de William, eight years old, the boy who helped save.
“We just want to thank everyone who contacted us and offered their help and condolences. It really means a lot for us at this time,” Laflair told CBC in a telephone interview on Thursday.
“And especially we want to thank the viewer who risked his life to save my son.”
