Hero politician plays down rescue
Published: October 3, 2005
A Tory MP turned lifesaver when he helped rescue a drowning man as he returned from a night out.
Lichfield MP Michael Fabricant and architecture student Jack Shelley teamed up to drag the wet and shivering man out of a city centre beauty spot.
Eighteen-year-old Jack was walking home in the early hours when he heard a man crying out from Minster Pool in the centre of Lichfield.
He saw the man, who later identified himself only as Ian from Birmingham, clinging on to the side of the pool and ran for help where he found Mr Fabricant getting out of a taxi.
The pair dragged the middle aged man out of the water and kept him warm until police and paramedics arrived. The man was conscious but suffered severe hypothermia.
The MP played down the rescue and said that anyone would have done the same. “We ran down and dragged him out from the bank, we went a bit into the water but we did not have to wade in.
“It was then just a question of calming him down, trying to keep him warm. Anybody would have done it in my position,” said the MP.
Mr Shelley, of Nether Beacon in the town, said he was on his way home from a night out with friends when he heard the cries for help.
The student said: “He was intoxicated, he was incapacitated almost. It wasn’t the the cold, it was the alcohol that was keeping him from climbing out.
“But he was too big for me to pull out on my own so I tried to find someone to give me a hand. The first person I happened to see was Michael Fabricant, which everyone seems to find really funny. I didn’t even recognise it was him at first.”
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