Motel guest dies after rescue from pool

TRAGEDY: The motel pool where the woman was found.

A woman who was found lying on the bottom of a Greerton motel swimming pool has died in hospital.

The owners of Cameron Thermal Motel spotted the 41-year-old Palmerston North woman in the thermal pool about 4.30pm on New Year's Eve.

They dragged the motel guest's lifeless body from the pool and began CPR as they waited for paramedics to arrive.

A St John paramedic who treated the woman said they arrived at the scene three minutes after the call came in and found the guest was not breathing and had no pulse. Paramedics worked on the woman for about 20 minutes and managed to restart her heart before taking her to hospital.

"We got her heart started through advanced airway care, defibrillation and cardiac drugs," he said. "It was a pretty traumatic job."

The top priority was on establishing and airway and focusing on ventilation so they put a tube into her lungs but did not manage to get her breathing on her own, he said.

The motel owner had called on skills learned in first aid courses and the help of the ambulance communications team, who talked her through how to resuscitate the woman.

The paramedic said it was important people knew basic skills such as CPR but putting it into practise was a different story, which was where the 111 call-takers came in.

"There's always help at the other end of the line," he said.

Detective Sergeant Alan Kingsbury said the woman had died in Tauranga Hospital overnight.

How she had died was not yet clear. A post-mortem examination would be carried out.

St John paramedics, not the motel owners, performed CPR on the woman for 20 minutes as stated in yesterday's paper. The owners tried to resuscitate her for about three minutes until St John staff arrived and took over.