Friday, 12 August 2022 | 22.3°C Dublin

A garda who dove into the River Liffey to rescue a drowning man has said she is still in shock over the incident.

G arda Sarah Lynam (24) used to be a competitive swimmer and those skills came in useful when she took part in the rescue last Friday afternoon.

She was on patrol in Dublin city centre when she received a call that a man had entered the Liffey from the boardwalk at Bachelors Quay at around 1.45pm.

She ran from the GPO on O’Connell Street towards the scene where she was told that the man had entered the water and that another garda was trying to spot him under Bachelor’s Walk boardwalk.

“I could see that he was floating face down. I did not know how far the Dublin Fire Brigade was, so I took my utility belt and stab vest off. I literally just jumped in the water, there was not any other option,” Gda Lynam told Independent.ie.

"When I got to him and flipped him over, I could see that he was foaming at the mouth.”

She then went underwater and pushed the man up so that another garda could pull him up out of the water.

“I asked out for a rope and my colleague threw one down, I wrapped it around my wrist and was pulled up with help from the public,” she said.

Gda Lynam manged to get the man and herself over to the docking pier, but he remained unresponsive.

“I could see he was not breathing. So, from what I could remember from my basic CPR skills, I gave him two or three pumps, that’s when water and foam started coming out.”

The CPR training, she said, came from both her time as a competitive swimmer and from her garda training.

Gda Lynam said she is still in shock following the rescue but is grateful that no one was injured.

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“It is not something we were specifically trained to do, because there could be danger of escalating the situation. But I was confident enough in my ability that I decided to go in.

"To be honest, I am still quite shocked by it. I was just doing the right thing at the right time. I did not know if I was going to be able to save his life or not.”

Gda Lynam initially joined the Defence Forces but later left and joined An Garda Síochána three years ago.

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