A mother was left worried sick when she realised her 16-year-old son was late coming home from school but she could never have imagined that he was actually fighting for his life in a horrific accident. Deborah Hunt found out through a Facebook post that her 16-year-old son had not been kept back in school but had actually been pulled from the Manchester ship canal, the Mirror reports.
The 53-year-old mother said: “I honestly thought I’d lost him. I screamed at my husband to get to the locks as soon as possible.” Unbeknownst to Deborah, Ethan had been returning home to Irlam from St Antony's Roman Catholic School in Stretford on January 10 when he stumbled upon a flooded pathway.
The 16-year-old walked out onto a docking jetty to get around the flood but a combination of poor lighting and heavy rain caused him to accidentally step off the edge into the water. Deborah explained: “He decided that because the path was flooded, he would use the little jetty thing to cut out the section of the flood".
“There were no lights on there so he basically couldn’t see where he was going. He walked off the end of it straight into the canal – it's quite the drop as well.”
Ethan was able to take off his backpack which had his phone in it and swam to the surface where he clung to a concrete post and screamed for help. Fortunately, three men happened to be walking along the canal path at the time and heard Ethan's cries.
One of them ran to a nearby work site to grab some rope as there was no life ring. Throwing the rope into the water, the heroic men were able to pull Ethan up to safety while the police, fire crews and ambulances had all been called and were on their way.
The 16-year-old was in the water for around ten minutes but paramedics have said it could have been very different circumstances if he had been in there for much longer. Debora who works as a data processor for the NHS said: “Hypothermia was setting in. It’s very scary. There’s just no protection there.
"The worst of it is, there isn’t even a lifebuoy. There’s no rings along there. The men that rescued him said if there had been a ring it would have been easier to get him out.”
Deborah and Eamon were out searching for Ethan when the mother was sent a Facebook post from one of the rescuers which said: "Just pulled a young lad from the canal, Ethan Hunt, does anyone know his parents?”
By the time Debora and Eamon reached the docks there was no one there and she received a phone call from her youngest son telling her there was a policeman at their door. She said: “I went home and that’s when we found out what had happened.
"The policeman said he was fine but in hospital. The Saturday before it happened, a man had been pulled out of the canal and unfortunately he didn’t make it.
"That was fresh in my mind and I genuinely thought I’d lost him. It was sheer panic.”
Thankfully Ethan only suffered minor bruises and scrapes as a result of being pulled out of the water.
Although he escaped the scary incident unharmed, Deborah said the teenager has been left emotionally scarred by his near death experience. She said: “But he’s struggling, he’s really struggling. He didn’t sleep for the first few nights.
"Every time he shut his eyes, he would say, ‘Mum, I’m back in the water and it’s freezing, I’m scared’.” Deborah has paid her gratitude to the 'heroes' who saved her son as she said: “We took them a bottle each and a thank you card. They’re my heroes.”
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