Amazing Grace (10) wins bravery award

A young girl from Knocknacarra has won a national bravery award for saving a young boy from drowning when she was on holidays earlier this year.

Grace Dill (10) from Clybaun Road won the Little Champion of the Year award at the Maternity & Infants magazine awards in Dublin last weekend.

Grace put her surf life-saving skills to good use on a holiday that could have well ended in tragedy, but for her quick thinking and bravery – she saved the little boy from drowning when on a family holiday in Majorca in July.

She was swimming in a pool in a resort on the Spanish island when she saw what she thought was a doll floating at the bottom. She went over and touched it and realised it was a boy lying face down and that he was still breathing. She immediately placed her hand under his head and called for help.

A man grabbed the child, a two years old Scottish boy, and placed him by the side of the pool, where the lifeguard applied CPR. That happened on the fourth day of the Dill family’s two-week holiday in Majorca and every day afterwards the boy came over to Grace to give her a hug.

“She’s very sporty. She’s involved in Gaelic, hockey and competitive swimming with the Sharks Swimming Club. She has been diving off Blackrock since the age of seven,” her mother Attracta told the Galway City.

“She didn’t panic but lifted his head and called for help. She was there the whole time at the pool side as the lifeguard gave CPR and I think it hit her afterwards and that she was in a bit of a shock,” she added.

For more on this story, see the Galway City Tribune.