LITTLE LAWN BEACH, N.L. – The last thing Jimmy Tarrant and Will Mavin expected to do when they took a trip to Little Lawn Beach to collect capelin on Friday evening was save a man’s life but that’s exactly what they did.
They watched 56-year old David Edwards walk into the water with his dip net.
“We were talking and figured he was out looking for capelin,” Mavin recalled.
“When we looked again, he was floating face down in the water. I said, ‘Jim, he’s drowning out there. I’ve got to go out and get him.’ So that’s what I did. I can’t swim very good myself so I walked out as far as I could, then there’s a big drop off there. I could feel that when I stepped ahead there was nothing there. I started to panic, then I found his dip net there floating in the water and I managed to reach out far enough to get a hold of him and pull him in.
"The beach there is almost like walking on quicksand. We had quite a hard job hauling him on shore, just me and Jim, because Jim is 88. We just managed to get him in far enough that we could get his head out of the water and I did CPR on him and worked on him for four to five minutes and had no response at all.”
The spot Mavin and Tarrant managed to drag Edwards up to was still too dangerous to administer CPR properly.
Waves were washing up and over Edwards, causing Tarrant to have to raise Edwards head up to avoid any more water inhalation from the larger waves. As he performed CPR on Edwards, he spotted three people much further up the beach, he waved his arms for help but the sun was in their eyes and they didn’t see the distress symbol.
“I said to Jim, ‘you’re going to have to stay here and hold on to him, keep him from going out in the water,” Mavin explained. “I’m going to have to get some help so we can haul him in.”
While Mavin walked across the beach to get more help, Tarrant kept up with the chest compressions that Mavin started. He also regularly lifted Edward’s shoulder so the water could come out of his mouth, and wiped froth away from his mouth and nose and lifted his head above the larger waves.
After some tense minutes, Tarrant was thrilled to hear Edwards take a deep breath.
Tarrant remembers anxiously thinking, “I hope they gets back in time, ‘cause he’s breathing.”
“While I was gone, Jim managed to get him to come to, which is good because to be honest with you, I thought he was dead,” Mavin said.
“It probably took me 10 minutes to walk up the beach to where they were. It’s one of those beaches where you take one step forward and two steps back. The sand is so soft that you just sink right into it.”
When he got there, a woman passed him her cell phone to call the ambulance. The men she was with, which included Andy Edwards, David Edwards’ uncle, had bikes, so the four of them jumped on their bikes to go back to Edwards and Tarrant. They pulled Edwards out of the water. Edwards was still unconscious.
A couple of firefighters from St. Lawrence showed up by then to collect capelin. One of the firefighters took over first aide duties on Edwards.
“He’s more trained at it than what I am,” Mavin stated. “He moved his (Edwards’) arms, getting the circulation going, he covered him up, kept him on his side, that sort of stuff.”
The ambulance, which happened to be in St. Lawrence, closer to the accident site than Lawn, made it over the rough dirt road to the beach, arriving 15 minutes after it was called.
Edwards, who was still unconscious, was loaded in and rushed to the St. Lawrence Hospital, then brought to the Burin Health Care Centre, then airlifted to the Health Sciences Centre in St. John’s. He had regained consciousness but remained in the Intensive Care Unit, until June 25, when he was transferred to a regular room.
In an unfortunate turn of events, Edwards’ uncle, Andy Edwards, who had warned his nephew that the side of the beach he was on was dangerous, suffered a heart attack and collapsed on the beach once the ambulance left. Tarrant and a lady lifted him onto a trike to get him off the beach. Andy Edwards required a second ambulance to take him to the hospital as well. He was treated and is now fine.
Both Tarrant and Mavin brush off the concept that they are heroes.
“It feels good I guess but you do what you gotta do,” Mavin said modestly. “Lucky enough that we were there.”
However, to Edwards’ mother, Kate Edwards, the two are definitely heroes. She also thinks it’s absolutely incredible that Tarrant was able to do so much to help her son at 88 years old. She visited both to tell them in person.
“I really do believe that those two men should get recognized,” Edwards said. "I will always be grateful and thankful that they were there and that they helped him.”
