Picture shows the two friends Adam (left ) and Samuel taken by James Balfour.
Two local friends Sam Trewick and Adam Whitehead have been praised for their bravery in rescuing one of the three men who fell into the frozen lake at Watermead Park in January. The two young men, Sam Trewick from Syston and Adam Whitehead from Thurmaston were enjoying sledging on Mammoth Hill, near the lake, when they heard the screams. They saw a man 30 yards from the bank, and the pair crawled across the ice as it cracked beneath them.
Adam, 22, of Thurmaston, said: “We heard shouting and looked down at the water and we could see this guy splashing about. We ran down straight away and Sam had a rope in his car, so we got that, asked someone to ring the ambulance and then gingerly made our way across the ice. He couldn’t speak English very well but he was shouting and we realised there were two more people in the water. We realised we needed to get him out so we threw the rope. He managed to get the top of his body out and we yanked him out. What we did was human nature.”
The pair were then faced with the task of trying to help the other two men, who were unconscious in the water.
“We were trying to assess the situation,” said Adam. “But there was nothing we could do. I was deciding whether to go out and get them but I just thought that if I fell in, Sam wouldn’t have been able to rescue me as well.”
Sam, 23, of Syston, said: “We could just see them floating in the water but we couldn’t see their heads. We could feel the ice getting weaker.”
The friends are both experienced in mountaineering and outdoor pursuits, and said this helped with the rescue.
