Migrant boat with women and children sinks, policeman saves couple from drowning
Ludovic Huez, a police officer for twenty years, will remember this intervention for a long time.
The Calais police officer is called with his colleagues to intervene early this Tuesday. The official explains in The voice of the North, “We received a call around 6:45 am, says the policeman, for twenty years in Calais, who knows the migratory problem. A dog handler had just heard howls and suspected that a boat had capsized ”.
Indeed, thirty-two migrants, including women and children, found themselves in the water after their boat capsized near the port of Calais. “It was pitch black and I heard screams coming from behind the wall, baby screams, chasing the father. There, on does not think. I took a barrier on the ground, I straightened it up with the help of CRS who came to support it. I leaned on it to climb up the wall ”.
The policeman sees about fifteen migrants in the water below. He explains to the regional daily that some are clinging to “soaked and haggard” riprap. I guided them to the beach with my flashlight. Among them is a woman with her six month old baby ”. Ludovic Huez then saw a man and a woman sinking, “I then jumped on the X-blocks (X-shaped riprap protecting the dike from flooding), I got down and I took advantage of a wave back to catch them before going up ”. “By the time the couple got out, I had lost sight of the woman and her baby, I was very worried,” recalls the policeman. I am the father of a family and that really marked me ”.