Prompt action by a Brantham teenager saved the life of a three-year-old boy.

Modest hero Neil Jenkins, 18, of The Street, was working as a lifeguard at a swimming pool at Las Brisas in the Canary Islands when he spotted the youngster lying face down at the bottom of the pool.

Although there were up to 100 people in the pool at the time, it was Neil who acted first. He dived into the water, pulled the child out and gave him first aid.

"I was the lifeguard so it was up to me," said Neil, who is a qualified lifeguard and also has first aid certificates.

He added: "No-one knows how it happened. The boy probably just slipped into the pool."

Neil put the boy, called Mitchell and from London, on a sunbed. He was unconscious, a little blue round the mouth and very floppy.

He explained: "I remembered my training and kept calm. His mother thought he was dead, but I could feel a pulse, put him in the recovery position, cleared the water out of his lungs and everything was all sorted out by the time the doctor arrived."

The teenager and his family had been going to the resort for holidays for ten years and this year, for the first time, Neil went to work there for seven weeks and is hoping to return again next summer.

He was joined by his family for the last two weeks and his mother Penny, justly proud of her son, said: "Someone came up and said your Neil's just saved a lad from drowning.

"Everyone crowded round and was praising him but he made nothing of it."

A former pupil of St Joseph's College in Ipswich, Neil returned home to Suffolk in time to pick up his A-level results last week

He is now looking forward to starting a degree course in forensic science at the University of Central Lancashire in Preston.

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