Heroes among us: Brave New Zealanders fight forces of nature
Published: January 29, 2005
As the riverbed’s shingle tightened its grip, 14-year-old Marek Staats cried out to the man trying to save him that he was going to die.
“Not you’re not,” Peter Deam told the boy as he dug frantically to keep Marek’s head above water and shingle out of his mouth.
In a last-ditch effort, Mr Deam stripped off his clothes and dived in, swimming into the dangerous channel formed by the moving shingle.
He found Marek’s legs and tried to push him free from below. But his efforts were in vain, and just as the emergency services arrived Marek drowned. A digger had to be used to retrieve his body.
Although it is almost five years since the tragedy on the Waihao River, Waimate, Mr Deam still prefers not to talk about it. Today his efforts have been formally recognised with the awarding of the New Zealand Bravery Star.
At his Waimate home Mr Deam said he was honoured to have been nominated, but did not feel he had done anything unusual. He tried his best, but as he was unable to save Marek, he feels his actions “weren’t really enough”.
Waimate sergeant Mike van der Heyden, who nominated Mr Deam, says: “He was extremely brave to try for so long in such dangerous conditions.”
Marek became trapped after stopping to retrieve his stepbrother’s gumboot in the moving shingle, where it had become stuck. “The stones got faster and faster,” Simon Woodham-Staats told the coroner’s court. “I tried to pull him out of the stones but I couldn’t.”
He ran for help and found Mr Deam at the carpark. Mr Deam tried to free Marek with his hands but the shingle’s pull was too great. He got a rope from his car and looped it under the boy’s arms. When that did not work he drove to the nearest house to get help. When he returned Marek was buried to his chest, which was when Mr Deam got in the water.
Sergeant van der Heyden also nominated 15-year-old Hamish Neal, from Waimate, who drowned as he tried to rescue a fellow student. Mr Neal has been posthumously awarded the New Zealand Bravery Medal.
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