A woman caught the moment her 16-year-old son fell more than 30 feet into a lake in a Welsh disused quarry and shattered his spine on camera.
Sam Wilson sustained the shocking accident last week while visiting the tourist attraction in Abereiddy, Pembrokeshire, with his mother Lindsay Wilson.
The 41-year-old employee of the NHS was recording as her kid jumped from the quarry’s edge and struck the water with a force comparable to landing on concrete.
Ms. Wilson, of Bradford, West Yorkshire, said that her son, who had previously done the dive safely, chose to make a second try. She videotaped him doing it while using her phone.
When her kid struck the water in a “slightly sitting posture” and came to the surface “looking pale,” Ms. Wilson realised her son was in danger immediately.
The adolescent managed to hold on to some boulders at the edge of the quarry until several other swimmers rescued him.
Sam is a large boy for a 16-year-old and an excellent swimmer, so at first, she said to Wales Online, “we didn’t believe anything was amiss.”
We assumed he was just waiting for them to exit first since there were other people in the lagoon at the same time.
But later, we saw that he had become pale and was clinging to the rocks.
A lady from a nearby outdoor adventure group, according to Ms. Wilson, swam over to her kid.
She praised Tessa from Celtic Quest Coasteering for her excellent assistance in assisting her son.
She claimed: “She put him on his back and a number of them swam him across to the beach using a paddleboard as a makeshift stretcher.
I can’t even begin to conceive what may have occurred if they hadn’t done that, so we are quite thankful.
The adolescent was flown by a coast guard helicopter to an ambulance, which took him to a hospital in Carmarthen where he got a CT scan.
The adolescent required a body brace after the teenager’s spinal fracture was diagnosed by doctors.
Ms. Wilson commented on her son’s injuries, saying, “It’s a good thing they were so thorough and demanded he get the scan because when he was initially checked out he must have still been in shock because he told physicians that he couldn’t feel any pain in his back.”
We just hope that the wound will naturally heal over time without the need for surgery.
Sam’s father and Ms. Wilson, according to Ms. Wilson, sleep on the floor of Sam’s bedroom at night in case he needs anything.
In order to discourage others from taking the same danger of tombstoning from a large height, Ms. Wilson said she wanted others to watch the footage of her son.
She said that just minutes after the rescue, other children at the quarry proceeded to dive into the water despite his wounds.