Up to late Tuesday evening first responders were still searching for a young man who had tried to save a woman from raging flood waters in the gully that runs adjacent to Mandela Town and Seiveright Gardens in the Waltham Park Road area of St Andrew.

In an ironic twist of fate, the woman, whose name has not been ascertained, was rescued by fisherman Anthony Sutherland in Majesty Gardens as heavy afternoon rain pelted the capital city.

People at the scene of the search, the Hunt’s Bay swamp where the gully empties before water flows into the sea, told the Jamaica Observer that the missing young man is 19-year-old Rajaun Melbourne. They said he had jumped into the gully in an effort to save the woman in the vicinity of Mandela Town.

Sutherland, recounting his experience, said he was at home watching a movie as it rained. He said that one of his friends was outside, saw the young man in difficulty in the water and had called out for help but he did not hear.

“My babymother come in and said to me ‘You in yah and pickney a wash weh inna gully.’ And mi seh, ‘eeh?’” Sutherland related.

He said he ran outside, but when he saw the volume of water in the gully he came to the conclusion that the young man had drowned “Because I know this gully. I born and grow yah so”.

Sutherland said a young woman who lives in the community walked past him, after which he heard her shouting “Tony, si the woman yah a come!”

“When I looked I saw the woman coming down in the middle of the gully a bawl say ‘Help, mi cyaan swim, mi a go dead!’ he related.

He said a wooden pallet was in the water beside the woman and he shouted at her to hold on to it as he was going to rescue her. She did, but the water flowed under a bridge and when he checked he saw only the pallet.

“But then mi see her rise up back inna the middle a the gully a float pon har face, so mi seh wait, a drown she drown,” Sutherland told the Observer.

“So I hang off on the gully side — because if I had jumped in I would have drowned — and stretch over, around two feet, and grab her in her neck and draw her over and hold her. She said, ‘Hold mi, nuh mek mi dead’, and me seh ‘Yu nah dead’, and she seh ‘Don’t let me go, don’t let mi go’,” Sutherland shared.

He said at this point he asked people standing around him to call for help because he know that he could not have lifted the woman from the gully by himself.

“So two youth come and help pull her up,” he said, but after that they ran off in search of the young man.

“She was still holding on to me and she seh ‘Thank you, thank you’, and then she fainted. So I slapped her on her jaw and ask, ‘Yu dead?’ and she said ‘No, mi nuh dead’. So I put her on her side and say ‘Alright, you life save, you nuh haffi worry, stay yah so’,” Sutherland shared.

He said after the woman was able to stand she hugged him, cried, and thanked him again for saving her life.

Speculating that the young man’s body may be either out at sea or in the Hunt’s Bay swamp area, Sutherland said that when he goes fishing this morning he will search for him.

“Mi vex how mi never out yah, because if mi did out yah that youth wouldn’t drown, mi would have to save him,” said Sutherland who told the Observer that he has rescued other people from danger before.