By GREGG WYCHERLEY
A man who went to the rescue of two children struggling in the sea yesterday paid the ultimate price for his bravery when he drowned while his child was saved.
Eyewitness Jackie Tehore, owner of Driftwood Lodge in Cable Bay, near the Far North town of Mangonui, said she saw someone struggling in the water about 150m from the beach.
"I looked out the window and saw something happening and yelled out to anyone who could hear, 'Come and get my dinghy and go out'."
But nobody was there to help and she had to drag the dinghy to the beach alone. The effort left her too tired to row.
Then a local rescue crew arrived but their boat engine took five minutes to start.
"The rescue people came along but they were more of a nuisance, because their motor wouldn't start," Jackie Tehore said.
"If I had got in the dinghy myself, I think a life could have been saved."
She said a local man eventually rowed her dinghy out in choppy seas, but he arrived too late to save the man, who was fully clothed. The two children were picked up by rescuers.
The dead man's family had yet to be told last night.
Father dies in sea rescue
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