Eliz­a­beth Gon­za­les

To­ba­go Cor­re­spon­dent

Sharon Vasquez-Richard, the moth­er of Caribbean Air­lines First Of­fi­cer Chris­ton Bat­ters­by, broke down in tears yes­ter­day as she met the two women who saved her son’s life in To­ba­go last Sat­ur­day.

Dur­ing a com­men­da­tion cer­e­mo­ny host­ed by the To­ba­go House of As­sem­bly (THA), Vasquez-Richard called them “an­gels” and said she was deeply grate­ful.

Speak­ing di­rect­ly to the women—An­na Hospedales of Cana­da and Sarah Perrson from Swe­den—Vasquez-Richard said, her voice shak­ing with emo­tion, “An­na and the oth­er an­gels who came and res­cued, re­vived, and gave life to my son, I want to say thank you from the bot­tom of my heart. God is go­ing to bless you all abun­dant­ly.”

The cer­e­mo­ny at the Di­vi­sion of Tourism’s head of­fice in Scar­bor­ough marked the first time Bat­ters­by’s fam­i­ly met Hospedales and Perrson.

The women were ho­n­oured for their brav­ery in res­cu­ing Bat­ters­by af­ter he was in­jured while div­ing off the Pi­geon Point jet­ty last Sat­ur­day.

Bat­ters­by struck his head on an un­known ob­ject, lost con­scious­ness, and was pulled to shore. Perrson, who was cap­tured on video per­form­ing CPR, kept him alive un­til emer­gency of­fi­cers ar­rived. Doc­tors lat­er con­firmed he had bro­ken his neck in two places and suf­fered spinal cord in­juries. He un­der­went surgery and is now re­cov­er­ing.

How­ev­er, the res­cuers said crit­i­cal min­utes were lost in the emer­gency re­sponse.

Hospedales re­called ar­riv­ing at the scene and re­al­is­ing no one had called emer­gency ser­vices yet, while Perrson pushed through ex­haus­tion to ad­min­is­ter CPR.

“In this sit­u­a­tion, it’s team­work. It’s very heavy; it’s very hard, and I un­der­stand that peo­ple want to take cam­eras and film, but it would have been bet­ter if some­one could have got­ten the shade, wa­ter, or called 911 way ear­li­er,” Hospedales said.

Perrson, who act­ed on in­stinct, be­lieves quick­er emer­gency re­sponse train­ing could save more lives.

“We al­ways trust peo­ple that are work­ing to know what to do. I think if they get the right amount of train­ing, they will act quick­er, faster,” she said.

Amid pub­lic crit­i­cism over the re­sponse time, THA Tourism Sec­re­tary Tashia Bur­ris said the life­guards did their best with the re­sources avail­able.

“Chris­ton is a mir­a­cle; that is the take­away. It doesn’t mat­ter if the res­cue was scrap­py, doesn’t mat­ter if they didn’t fol­low the text­book, doesn’t mat­ter if it was per­fect. Chris­ton be­ing here still is a mir­a­cle,” she said.

The women, who say they hadn’t planned to be at the beach that day, be­lieve they were meant to be there by di­vine in­ter­ven­tion. Bat­ters­by’s fam­i­ly said they will nev­er for­get the strangers who saved his life.