A woman who witnessed the drowning of the 46-year-old man at Ballincollig Regional Park last night was speaking on Cork’s 96fm this morning about the tragedy.
Melanie O’Driscoll said the event had a profound effect on her as she had lost her own father six years ago in a drowning accident.
Recalling yesterday’s incident, Melanie said she was down at the park on a picnic with her daughter and husband when she saw the man jump off the weir and get into difficulty.
“He was trying to keep himself up, his hands were going backwards. There was people in the water trying to swim to him.
“My husband ran to the other side of the water on the lower side of the Weir and I went to the centre and I was screaming: ‘Stay on your back, stay on your back’.”
Melanie’s husband and another man named Shane ran across the other side to try and get to him.
Unfortunately, Melanie said no one could get to him because of the current. “Eventually he floated down into my husband’s arms, and my husband, Shane and myself pulled him out of the water.”
She recalled how her own father had drowned six years ago.
“He was out fishing in the same spot as he always was and he just slipped, hit his head off the rocks and drowned.”
As the daughter of a drowning victim, Melanie then comforted the 12-year-old daughter of the man who drowned last night.
“I sat on those stones with his daughter trying to console her, she was standing there as my husband and everyone else did amazing work on her dad.”
“I kept asking her, where’s your mommy, where’s your mommy and she just said my mommy’s not here, my dad is here, that’s my dad, please save him.”
Melanie said things became chaotic after they pulled him out of the water.
“There was people coming from everywhere, there were two nurses, a health care worker and they performed amazingly, absolutely amazingly.”
Melanie described how they rang emergency services while her four-year-old daughter was screaming in panic, as she did not understand what was going on.
“They said to keep pushing his chest, keep performing CPR until someone got there and send someone up to the gate so that they could show them where to go.”
Melanie described the scene as they waited for the ambulance.
“It was traumatising, it really was traumatising, there were people everywhere.”
The shaken woman, close to tears, offered her condolences to the family of the man who passed away.
“We tried our best, we tried to get to him as quick as we could, but we just couldn’t.”
“It was heartbreaking to see it.”
Listen to the full interview on Cork’s 96fm here.
