Off-duty Hakea Prison officer Deputy Supt Thomas Heap saves man from drowning at Serpentine Falls

Off-duty, half-clothed and still wearing socks, Hakea Prison Deputy Supt Thomas Heap did not think twice before diving into the water at Serpentine Falls to save a swimmer from drowning. The prison officer was enjoying a day out at the popular swimming hole with family and friends when disaster struck. “My partner forgot to pack everybody’s swimmers so I was just sitting on the sideline, so I was watching on ... then we noticed a gentleman waving in the middle of the falls,” Dep. Supt. Heap told The West Australian. “Initially, we didn’t really take it too seriously but then once we realised he went down and came back up, he was obviously in distress.” Without a moment’s hesitation, Dep. Supt. Heap jumped into the water to rescue the swimmer while his mate, former lifeguard Gareth Carney, ran to get a life ring. “I was looking around ... I could see that nobody else was going to assist, so I was like, ‘Right, we need to do something now’,” he said. “You don’t really have that moment to ask somebody else to go in ... it was, ‘Right, let’s just go and make sure that he’s OK’.” Mr Carney said they acted on instinct and did not think twice before jumping in. “We both acted at the same time, it was synchronised,” he said. “I went to the water’s edge to get the life ring ... Thomas entered the water, I threw the ring in and then followed Thomas towards the drowning man. “We saw somebody in distress and with both of our backgrounds, we just acted on it.” Mr Carney said the man was in visible distress and was pushing another swimmer down in a desperate bid to stay afloat. “There was another young lad in the water that was closer to him who was already swimming around him ... he got dragged under as well,” Mr Carney said. “I have a previous qualification in lifeguarding when I was a young boy, so I learnt to stay away and assess the situation first.” Dep. Supt. Heap said Mr Carney tossed the life ring towards the panicked swimmer before calming him down and helping him back to shore. He said the man later revealed he had tried swimming out to the waterfall but ran into trouble when he realised the water was too deep for him to stand. He did not require any further medical attention. “The man said he wasn’t the strongest swimmer but he thought he could get to the falls ... and halfway he realised it was probably a bit too far for him,” Dep. Supt Heap said. “He tried to turn around and come back and realised that was too far for him, then he just sort of stalled and panicked in the moment ... he just had that shock on his face. “We got him back to the edge and he was huffing and spluttering for a bit.” Dep. Supt. Heap credited his skills as a prison officer, saying he was trained to respond to unpredictable, high pressure situations. “On a day to day basis we’re dealing with difficult situations that are sometimes unpredictable ... having to deal with an incident at a drop of a hat, you become accustomed to being able to plan and perform quickly,” he said. “We don’t do stuff for the recognition, we step up because it’s the right thing to do. “It’s not about being humble ... I hope that if that was me in the same situation, someone would help me as well.” Mr Carney said the pair would have jumped in and rescued anyone, adding the ordeal was a “good deed for the day”. “When you look back, you think we’ve actually saved someone’s life,” he said. “It turned out to be quite the good deed for the day and if we weren’t there, he would have had no one else because no one else seemed to be going in for him.” Dep. Supt. Heap spoke out about the Serpentine Falls rescue just weeks after 13-year-old hero Austin Appelbee swum 4km to help save his family, who were swept out to sea on a paddle board near Dunsborough in the South west. The Gidgegannup family were holidaying at Club Wyndham when they hired a kayak and two paddle boards on January 30 to explore the coastline. However, the family was dragged out to sea, forcing mother Joanne Appelbee to make the terrifying decision to send her eldest son to shore to save them. “As the sun went down I thought, ‘Something’s gone terribly wrong here’, and my fear was that Austin didn’t make it ... everything goes through your head,” Ms Appelbee said at the time. After four exhausting hours, Austin made it to shore and phoned triple-0, leading to the incredible rescue of his mother and siblings, who were found about 14km offshore. “I didn’t know where they were and how they were, and I thought they were dead,” the teenager said. “(When they were rescued) I thought it was fake, I didn’t believe it, I was really happy but I couldn’t process it.”