David Evans, whose daughter Lilly was rescued by Tenby RNLI after being blown out to sea on her paddleboard at Pendine Sands. The family were reunited with the lifeboat crew at the station to say thank you. David is running the Newport and London marathons in Arpil 2025 to raise funds for Tenby RNLI.
Category
🗞
NewsTranscript
00:00My name is David and I'm Lily's dad
00:04Normal summer's day. I was in work
00:07Kiki rang me to see if we fancy going down the beach in the night
00:11so
00:12After work, we all went down the beach and I was about it for them that day
00:20We're all on the beach everything seemed to be normal I was further up the beach with my oldest daughter and I
00:27could see keeks
00:30Shouting so I looked over and run. I run down the beach to Kiki
00:35And it's then she told me that she thinks Lily's struggling to get back to shore because the wind was blowing her quite a way out
00:42so I
00:45Started panicking a little bit and told her I'm gonna have to go in and try and get her
00:47So I went into the sea and tried to get to her
00:53When I seen Lily
00:54Lily was shouting and she looked a bit panicked. So it was then I realized that she can't get back in
01:00Firstly that I've just got to get to her. So I took my top of my trainers and I went into the sea and
01:08Started trying to swim out to her but
01:10The harder I was trying to swim I was looking up and she was getting further and further away. So I
01:16Realized I wouldn't be able to get to her
01:18I was just feeling pure panic and the thing just thinking I'd we need to try and do something need to try and get to
01:24And then she was just getting further and further away. I
01:28Remember I stopped swimming
01:33Looked over to the beach
01:35Could see kicks. She was on her knees just screaming like
01:41screaming as loud as she could and
01:43luckily, she might she'd already rang the 999 to
01:47Alert them so and help was on its way
01:50But I remember
01:52shouting to Lily then please please can you hold on Lill's and
01:57Then she was just getting further and further away then I
02:00remember thinking
02:03Relief I remember thinking
02:06As silly as it is thinking to myself if she comes off now, it won't matter because they're close enough to save her but
02:13When it stopped for a few minutes and we still didn't know if she was on the board
02:16That's we're still panicking them. Like I thought I thought I'd never see her again
02:21felt like I didn't thank him enough when it all happened, but
02:25Be nice to see him today. So thank you. Absolutely
02:30Without them. I would have lost the daughter. So
02:34Everything to us now before I one of them that took them for granted but
02:38Until you're in that situation and you need them. That's when you realize how important they are
02:43in April
02:46They're gonna be doing two marathons the Newport and the London Marathon hopefully raised a bit of money for him
02:52Just like I said before I felt like I didn't say thank you enough to him on the day
02:57So my it's my way of just trying to give a bit back. So
03:01don't take it for granted be always be observant and
03:06Be careful really and if anything does happen, you know, you can ring straight away for for help
03:11During that 40 minutes those times I thought I'd never see her again. So it means that absolutely everything to us