Michael saves a life in pool drama
MP helps to rescue man

Exclusive by Stuart Pollitt, Express & Star

Oct 1, 2005

Lichfield MP Michael Fabricant turned hero when he helped someone rescue
a drowning man from a city beauty spot.

Mr Fabricant and Jack Shelley together pulled the shivering man out of
Minster Pool in the nick of time. Paramedics later said he would have
died of hypothermia without their intervention.

Mr Fabricant played down the rescue and said anyone would have done the same.

But Mr Shelley said he was a lifesaver. The 18-year-old was walking home after midnight on Thursday morning when he heard a man crying out from Minster Pool.

He saw the man, who called himself Ian from Snow Hill, clinging on to the side and ran for help where he found Mr Fabricant getting out of a taxi near his Beacon Street home.

Mr Fabricant, who had returned from a night out in Birmingham, said: "We ran down and dragged him out from the bank, we went a bit into the water but we didn’t have to wade in.

"It was then just a question of calming him down, trying to keep him warm and making sure he wasn’t going to be sick and choke on his own vomit.

Recovery

"We kept talking to him and made sure he didn’t fall asleep. Anybody would have done it in my position.

"We did get a bit wet but maybe, just maybe we saved a life."

Mr Fabricant, who has some knowledge of first aid, put the man, aged around 60, in the recovery position and threw his coat over him to ward off the cold.

They called police and the ambulance service who arrived to find the man conscious but suffering severe hypothermia.

He was taken by ambulance to Burton upon Trent’s Queen’s Hospital and has now been released.

Mr Fabricant praised fellow rescuer Mr Shelley, of Nether Beacon, for his quick thinking and for remaining calm.

Mr Shelley, who works at Lichfield architects Brownhill, Hayward, Brown, said: "I was just relieved we had got him out." Staffordshire Ambulance spokesman Bob Lee said: "It is a very nice example of civic spirit."