Durban lifeguard traumatised after he couldn't save boy who fell to his death

For the first time in his 10-year career as a lifeguard, Thobani Nhlangano battled to hold back tears as he frantically tried to save a five-year-old boy who fell out of a window on the 12th floor of the Silver Sands Lifestyle Resort on Tuesday morning.

The Durban lifeguard was on the upper deck on the lifeguard tower on Durban's beachfront when he heard screams for help.

He ran to the scene, where he found hysterical residents, hotel staff and holidaymakers gathered around a boy, who was on holiday from Gauteng when he fell from the window on to the pavement.

Nhlangano immediately began administering CPR, while Kalem Matthews, a resident who had witnessed the child falling from the 12th floor, ran to nearby Addington Hospital for help.

“My parental instincts kicked in because I thought to myself, what if this was my child? My lifeguard instincts followed through because I wanted to try to save him so badly. I wanted him to be OK. I wanted him to breathe. I wanted him to be alive,” he told TimesLIVE on Thursday.

Nhlangano wiped away tears while he tried to bring the boy back to life as the child's siblings, aged between 7 and 9, mother and grandmother cried hysterically next to him.

Eventually, he had to give up when the paramedics arrived.

“Some people said, 'You did all that you could, you're a hero.' But you don’t feel like a hero if you didn’t save someone. I have saved so many people in my experience over 10 years. It becomes your second nature to save people. But when it came to that boy, I really wanted to do my best and revive him,” said Nhlangano.

“Out of all the rescues in my career, I wanted to do right by that boy — but unfortunately it just wasn’t the day to save him.”

He couldn’t bear watching the paramedics pronounce the child dead, so he went back to the lifeguard tower.

“I didn’t wait around. I couldn’t face the mother. I couldn’t watch it unfold.”

Nhlangano is haunted by the experience.

“I was so emotional on that day, and I am still traumatised about it. I can't stop thinking about it,” he said.

The child's family was moved from their room to another part of the resort shortly after the incident. It is not known whether they have gone back to Gauteng.

TimesLIVE