Off-duty policeman saves boy who couldn't swim from drowning

A trainee officer with Casabermeja’s Local Police force saved the life of a drowning ten-year-old boy on Saturday. The policeman, who has been named only as ‘Juan’, was off duty that day, so he and his wife and daughter had decided to spend it at the swimming pool of a social club in Malaga city.

They were about to leave the pool area to go and have lunch about 2pm when Juan heard a child shout for help. “At first I thought he was just playing about, but then I realised he really was in trouble,” he said, afterwards.

The ten-year-old was in the deep end but didn’t seem to know how to swim and Juan, fully clothed, dived in and grabbed the child, who by then was on the bottom of the pool.

“He couldn’t stay afloat. He was swallowing water and sinking, so I didn’t think twice. I just dived in to get him. I don’t think he had realised he was in the deep end”, he said afterwards.

Just after the police officer rescued the boy, the lifeguard arrived on the scene. He had been at the other end of the complex and hadn’t realised what had happened because there was so much noise from a social event in the bar-restaurant of the club.

“The poor little lad was very scared,” Juan said. “He started to cough because he had swallowed water, but he was conscious, so I left him with the lifeguard. I think his mother was there too, but I didn’t meet her. Once I saw he was OK, I just left”.