Beach angler thought toddler – who had let himself out of parents’ nearby tent – was a doll floating in water

This article is more than 1 year old

This article is more than 1 year old

A New Zealand fisherman who mistook a drowning toddler for a doll has been praised for saving the child’s life.

Gus Hutt was casting a line off Matata Beach in the North Island last week when he spotted what he thought was a porcelain doll in the water.

Curious, Hutt dragged the body in from the sea where it was being swept along by a rip and realised it was actually a drowning 18-month old boy.

Hutt usually fished in a different part of the beach and it was pure luck he was in the right spot to see the child just after sunrise.

“I reached out and grabbed him by the arm; even then I still thought it was just a doll,” Hutt told the Whakatane Beacon, a local paper.

“His face looked just like porcelain with his short hair wetted down, but then he let out a little squeak and I thought: ‘Oh God this is a baby and it’s alive.’”

“If I hadn’t been there, or if I had just been a minute later I wouldn’t have seen him … he was bloody lucky, but he just wasn’t meant to go. It wasn’t his time.”

The boy had wandered away from his parent’s nearby campsite early that morning and isn’t believed to have been in the water long. His parents were woken by Hutt’s wife who asked them if they had a baby and said her husband had found a child in the sea.

It is believed the toddler unzipped the tent while his parents were sleeping and walked down to the beach, where his footsteps were found entering the ocean about 15 metres from where Hutt spotted him.

“He wasn’t in the water long. I must’ve just missed seeing him go in,” Hutt said.

The child’s mother, Jessica Whyte, screamed when she realised her baby was gone and told Stuff that she didn’t think her heart worked in the moments after she was told her son had been found in the water.

Rebecca Salter, co-owner of the holiday camp where the boy’s family were staying told the BBC the incident was a “freakish miracle”

“It got here as a shock to everybody. It was a really, very fortunate outcome … it might have been a really tragic accident.”

The child was initially treated by local emergency services before being taken by ambulance to Whakatane Hospital. Police briefly attended the scene but said they were not taking any further action.

Hutt said the child recovered quickly even if he and his wife were still shaken by the incident.

“He was wriggling trying to get down to have a look at everything, he was just a lovely, cheeky little fella.”