This article is more than 2 years old

This article is more than 2 years old

A new mother has thanked a “hero” driver who loaded her car onto his lorry so she could escape high tide on a flooded causeway in time to give birth.

Kelly Brinkman was in labour and waiting for 3ft 6ins-deep (1.2m) sea water to recede on the Strood causeway from Mersea Island, Essex, when lorry driver Justin Tacey spotted her worried partner.

The couple had been unable to get their Ford Kuga onto the flooded causeway to get to hospital. Realising their predicament, Tacey offered to load their car onto his higher lorry, which normally carries diggers, and drive across the water.

When the couple made it back on the road and arrived at nearby Colchester hospital, his actions proved to be crucial. Brinkman had to undergo an emergency caesarean section, and 30 minutes later her daughter Lillie was born.

“The only thing I can think of is that Justin was meant to be there for us,” Brinkman, 32, said. “If it was not for him, we could be telling a completely different story now.

“Something or someone was watching over us, I have no doubt about it. If Justin had not been there, I have no idea what we would have done or what would have happened.

“As it is, we were sent home with a healthy little baby and a story which is going to be well known on the island for years to come.”

Tacey, a 45-year-old father-of-four from Norfolk, had made a delivery to one of the holiday camps on the island and was heading to Suffolk.

“We had a word with the coastguard and decided it was worth giving it a go,” he said. “It was probably the only way forward. We got the car on the back of the lorry and we had to take it really steady.

“If I had gone much faster then there is a chance she would have had the baby on the back of the lorry, the poor girl.

“I was just doing what anyone else would have done.”

Tacey was hailed as a “true gentleman” by a spokesman for the West Mersea coastguard rescue team.