Father drowns after rescuing his children from sea in Ashdod

Police locate body of Bet Shemesh father after assistance from helicopter, divers; crew discover body of 60-year-old near Haifa.

By BEN HARTMAN
Ashdod port 370 (photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
Ashdod port 370
(photo credit: Wikimedia Commons)
A father who ran into the sea off the coast of Ashdod to save his two kids drowned only minutes after saving his childrens’ lives, paramedics said Sunday night.
Magen David Adom paramedic Ya’acov Abuaron said that he received a call that a man was drowning at Lido Beach in the city, and that when they arrived they joined police in searching for the man. A police helicopter finally spotted him floating a kilometer south of the beach about a half hour later.
Police and paramedics pulled the man’s body out of the water and who tried to revive him, but had to pronounce him dead at the scene.
Abuaron said that the man, 45, was fully dressed when he was pulled from the water, and that his children, aged 15 and 16, told paramedics he had dashed into water to save them after they began to get swept away by the current. Abuaron said that the father was able to carry his children back to where they could stand, but that most likely by then he was so exhausted and weighed down by his wet clothes that he could not fight the water any longer.