Sascha Wil­son

Se­nior Re­porter

sascha.wil­son@guardian.co.tt

An un­cle of teenag­er Em­manuel Williams, who drowned at Clifton Hill Beach on Fri­day, is urg­ing sea bathers to ex­er­cise cau­tion when vis­it­ing the na­tion’s beach­es.

Em­manuel had gone to the beach with friends aged 17, 18 and 23. The youngest mem­ber of the group told po­lice that at around 1.25 pm they were div­ing off rocks when Em­manuel en­coun­tered dif­fi­cul­ty in the wa­ter.

Two of Em­manuel’s friends and oth­er beach­go­ers, at­tempt­ed to as­sist him, but he strug­gled and even­tu­al­ly dis­ap­peared be­neath the sur­face.

With the as­sis­tance of a free­lance div­er, Em­manuel’s body was lat­er re­cov­ered at about 5.30 pm near some rocks, ap­prox­i­mate­ly 20 feet off­shore.

Speak­ing at his home in Cochrane Vil­lage, Guapo, yes­ter­day, Em­manuel’s un­cle, Randy Williams, said he had al­so been at the beach that day and had seen the teen and his friends play­ing in the wa­ter.

Some­time lat­er, he no­ticed that the group was in dis­tress.

“Three of them was beat­ing up in the wa­ter,” Williams said.

Williams said he dove in­to the sea and, de­spite the strong cur­rent, at­tempt­ed to help.

“I tried to as­sist them; the wa­ter was strong, pulling all of us. At the time it was dif­fi­cult to bring them in to­geth­er,” he said.

Em­manuel’s friends even­tu­al­ly sur­vived.

Re­flect­ing on the or­deal, Williams said he was grate­ful to be alive.

“I pull out two of them, and when I turn back for the third one, it was too late. I near­ly didn’t make it be­cause the jack­et I had on was not ap­pro­pri­ate to car­ry the weight. I don’t know what bring me back, but I come back,” he said.

De­spite the large crowd at the beach, Williams said he was dis­ap­point­ed that on­ly a few peo­ple at­tempt­ed to as­sist, and it was through their ef­forts that the two oth­er young men sur­vived.

“The help that we get, it was re­al poor, con­sid­er­ing the crowd that was on the beach. It was re­al­ly poor be­cause it had peo­ple who could have as­sist­ed us. All of them would have come out nor­mal, but it was poor—ter­ri­ble,” he said.

Williams urged sea bathers to ex­er­cise cau­tion and en­sure some­one is al­ways mon­i­tor­ing swim­mers in case of emer­gency.

“Life as we know it right now, it re­al. It is not no movie or any­thing—it re­al. One minute you here and the next minute you gone. It was not a nice ex­pe­ri­ence,” he said.

An au­top­sy is ex­pect­ed to be con­duct­ed at the San Fer­nan­do mor­tu­ary.