The waves were a little too big for Peter Doucette two Sundays ago around 10:30 a.m. at the Manhattan Beach Pier.
Although the pier was packed with hundreds of people, the water was less busy than it usually would have been at that time, with only about 30 surfers in the water, he said.
He had come with his neighbor to go surfing but decided against it because of the eight- to ten-foot waves. Instead, he stood on the pier, taking photos of the surfers. He and neighbor Donna Hesse noticed a boy paddling out on a surfboard about 15 to 20 feet away from the southern side of the pier, near the Roundhouse Aquarium, in an “awkward position.”
“We were both watching, saying he’s not in a good spot,” said Doucette.
He watched the boy, about 13 or 14 years old, as a wave, six to seven feet high, came in.
“He hesitated whether to ride it or go under,” said Doucette, an organic chemistry professor at El Camino College.
The boy ditched his board and went under. Then the next wave came, a foot or two bigger.
“If he didn’t make the first wave, he wasn’t going to make the second,” said Doucette.
Instead, the boy “did like a body board and the white water hit him,” he said. “It completely obliterated him.”
The boy lost control of the board. The water, due to a southern swell, rushed under the pier where Doucette was standing, about halfway toward the Roundhouse.
Doucette had seen a similar thing happen to another surfer an hour earlier when the person came out on the other side of the pier.
He couldn’t see the boy, but he heard him yelling from under the pier.
“I thought he said, ‘My effing leg, my effing leg,’” said Doucette.
Doucette’s neighbor ran to get the life ring near the aquarium. The lifeguards and two fire trucks were in the parking lot, where they had been summoned when someone started having a problem with his heart. A skateboarder said he’d go get a lifeguard.
A couple more waves washed over the pier.
No longer able to hear the boy, Doucette walked over to the other side of the pier.
“By the time I looked down to the water on the north side, three surfers had already gotten to him there and had him lying on his back on a body board,” said Doucette.
The boy’s eyes were open but he was unconscious.
“There was a huge ring of blood around him in the water,” said Doucette. “It looked like a dead body.”
People on the pier started screaming.
“The whole north side of the pier was lined with people,” said Doucette. “Everybody was yelling for the lifeguards.”
Fighting off the big waves, the trio, which Doucette said consisted of body boarder Kyle Dalbey and surfers Brent Bowen and Natalie Anzivino, got the boy close to the beach.
“It all seemed in slow motion and fast motion, all at once,” said Doucette. “It seemed like it took them forever, but they got him as fast as they could considering the waves.”
The lifeguards took over, cutting off the boy’s wetsuit and doing CPR. The boy “wasn’t breathing but had a pulse,” according to lifeguard spokesperson Kenichi Haskett. After about five minutes, he still wasn’t breathing, so they loaded him into an ambulance and took him to Harbor UCLA.
Doucette ran down to the beach and hugged the rescuers, two of whom he knew through surfing.
The experience shook Doucette up, he said.
“It was such a coincidence of events for him to wind up there face first on the pylon,” said Doucette. “It was horrible to see. I really felt helpless.”
He said in an email that he wanted to tell the story to “educate others on how quickly things can go wrong in the water (especially when the surf is big) and how bad the consequences can be, “ and to celebrate the three who rescued the boy.
“Had they not been there and done what they did, he would 100 percent have been dead on the spot,” he said. “They’re heroes–no other word for it.”
On Friday, Doucette visited the boy in the hospital, whom he learned was named Jimmy Walsh and whom he said was doing well.
“He has a black eye and a few skull fractures (that won’t require surgery), but no major damage to his eye or face,” he wrote in an email. “He even walked a little bit yesterday around the halls of the hospital! He can’t quite carry on a conversation yet, but he was talking a bit and responding to questions.”
Walsh didn’t remember any of the events of that Sunday, said Doucette.
“All in all he is doing really, really well considering what happened to him,” he wrote. “That’s one tough kiddo for sure!” ER
