Sydney jetski crash: Parents want stricter water safety laws after son’s death

Mitchell Irvine with his mother Andrea. Photo / 9News

The parents of a 15-year-old boy who died in a jetski crash in Sydney’s south in July say they still drive 20 minutes every day to visit the site of the incident.

Mitchell Irvine died and his 14-year-old friend Noah Watkins lost an arm after they were thrown from a jetski they were riding in the Georges River, likely after hitting an obstacle in the water. Both boys were experienced jetski riders and were wearing life jackets.

“We keep thinking, we just weren’t there in his last [moments] ... and to help him when he needed us, we weren’t there,” his mother Andrea Irvine told Nine News.

“I dropped him off at like four [in the afternoon] and I said, pick you up at seven, and that was it.”

Irvine and her husband Neil remember their boy as an active kid who wore his heart on his sleeve.

“He loved to travel, he’d recently started working at Macca’s, he loved anything from nippers to boxing to cricket to footy,” she said. “But he still took his teddy bears to bed, he was still our baby.”

They’re now calling on the state government to implement stricter water safety laws including raising the minimum age for holding a personal watercraft licence to 16, and making the use of high-buoyancy life jackets mandatory.

“What would have happened if he had been wearing a life jacket that flipped you over? Would that have been the thing that saved him?” Mitchell’s father Neil said.

“Most of us are like cats, we do get more than one chance in life. How could a kid like that only get one chance? And have multiple things go wrong on that one night.

“If they fix the age that people can actually drive a jetski, which is currently 12, that will fix a number of problems,” he said.

The incident happened near a bridge. It's believed the boys - who were on the same jetski - hit an object or obstacle in the water. Photo / Gaye Gerard, NewsWire

Two of the first responders on the scene, Constable Jesse Hockey and paramedic Scott McNamara, dived into the water and swam 50m to help the boys.

“[It was] cold, murky, dark – we couldn’t see much,” Constable Hockey said at the time.

They were able to retrieve Noah, who was falling in and out of consciousness when they arrived.

“The boy was floating, we grabbed him and pulled him in.”

Mitchell was found not long after but couldn’t be revived.

Friends and classmates of the teens gathered at the edge of the water to pay their respects after the accident. Photo / Gaye Gerard, NewsWire

Family friend Fred Nagi said the boys were “pretty experienced” jetskiers who were likely caught up in a “tragic accident”.

He said the sun had set when the boys hit the obstacle near a bridge, arguing there was insufficient lighting underneath the bridge.

“[It’s] dark under the bridge because sometimes you just don’t realise, ‘oh, the sun’s going down, I better get back’, as you’re on the water having fun, fishing, riding with the boys,” Nagi said.

“It’s an innocent, tragic, unfortunate mistake. They’ve hit the barge … there’s no lights on [the bridge].”

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