A MINEHEAD pensioner has thanked two have-a-go-heroes who helped save his life when he fell off his mobility scooter in The Parks.
As exclusively reported in last week’s Free Press, Rodney Kitchen, 79, was knocked unconscious and was lying face down in a stream when he was found by Butlin’s painters Tomasz Wagner and Zbigniew Gut.
“I remember trying to turn the scooter round to look at something then it went away with gravity and I don’t remember anything else apart from being loaded into an ambulance,” he said this week.
“It was a genuine accident. I just tried to turn and it happened.
“I wanted to thank them both for what they did. I hadn’t realised how serious it was until I saw the article in the Free Press.”
Mr Kitchen spent almost a week in hospital and was largely unable to eat or drink during that time as he felt nauseous due to the amount of water in his lungs.
“I’m still trying to get the water out of my lungs now,” Mr Kitchen said this week.
He had only had the mobility scooter for two weeks when he took a tumble in The Parks.
Tomasz and Zbigniew were helping their boss Thomas Todd in Parkhouse Road when they heard someone screaming for help.
Tomasz was first on the scene and was told a man had fallen in but was nowhere to be seen.
He jumped in and found him in the undergrowth but was able to hold his head clear of the water until Zbigniew arrived to help get him out of the stream.
The two men waited with the pensioner until the emergency services arrived but had no idea if he had been seriously hurt in the fall.
Mr Kitchen was only discharged from hospital last Friday and on Monday contacted the Free Press to say he was on the road to recovery and keen to thank his rescuers.
“I was just in The Parks talking to someone when they pointed something out and I tried to turn the scooter to have a look.
“I felt the scooter slipping away and that was it, but thankfully, apart from the water in my lungs, there was no other real damage done,” Mr Kitchen said.
He is pictured giving Tomasz (on the right) and Zbigniew an update on his condition when he met them on Tuesday to say ‘thank you’.
Photo: Paul Scullion