An 18-month-old boy is lucky to be alive after he wandered from his parents’ tent on a New Zealand beach and was swept away into the ocean.
A fisherman happened to be in the right place at the right time late last month when he plucked what he thought was a doll from the ocean at Matata Beach.
“As he floated past I thought he was just a doll,” Gus Hutt explained to the New Zealand Herald. “So, I reached out and grabbed him by the arm; even then I still thought it was just a doll.
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“His face looked just like porcelain with his short hair wetted down, but then and he let out a little squeak and I thought ‘oh God this is a baby and it’s alive,’” the man said.
Turns out the child had escaped his parents’ tent at Murphy’s Holiday Camp, where Hutt usually goes to fish. On that fateful day, the man decided to walk about 100 metres farther down the shoreline from his usual spot.
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“He was floating at a steady pace with a rip in the water. If I hadn’t been there, or if I had just been a minute later I wouldn’t have seen him,” Hutt told the Herald. “He was bloody lucky, but he just wasn’t meant to go; it wasn’t his time.”
According to the newspaper, Hutt’s wife, Sue, alerted camp staff as to what had happened, and they directed her to the child’s parents, as they were the only guests checked in with a baby.
“She ran to the tent and just shook it and asked, ‘where’s your baby – we just pulled one from the sea’ and the mother just screamed,” Hutt said of his wife’s account.
Murphy’s Holiday Camp co-owner Rebecca Salter told the BBC the incident unfolded on the first day of the family’s stay.
“It’s a freakish miracle,” she added.
Authorities told the Herald the child should make a full recovery and officers are not investigating the incident.
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