The body of a man has been found following a police operation in the netted area at Brighton Le Sands after an hour-long search.
‘You could hear the screams as they pulled the body out,’ a distressed eyewitness told Daily Mail Australia on Monday night.
‘His partner ran into the water but the police stopped her. You could see them working frantically on him, they were really trying so hard to save this guy.’
A man and a woman were free-diving in the netted area of the beach when he didn’t resurface. The ‘partner’ of the man reportedly screamed and ran into the water when his body was found
Eyewitness Henry Benjamin said a chopper flew over the water during the frantic search
Police from St George Local Area Command were contacted about 7pm on Monday when a man failed to surface after free-diving with the woman near Brighton Bar.
‘We heard sirens around 7pm, and we knew something bad was going on…A police boat went out to the net where the swimmers go and a police diver jumped from the boat,’ Mr Benjamin said.
‘It was obvious they were looking for a person.’
‘Then a helicopter flew over the beach, and it was trying to push the water back with the force of the rotor blades to help them see into the water.’
At 8pm another police boat and a search and rescue vessel joined the operation.
Three more police divers entered the water, and the body of a man, believed to be aged in his 30s, was found half an hour later.
Hundreds of onlookers packed the beach and boardwalk as emergency crews tried to save him
‘They tried so hard to resuscitate him, they probably worked on him for 20 minutes,’ Henry said
By 8pm, two police boats and a search and rescue vessel had joined the search for the diver
Police were called after a man in his 30s failed to surface while diving at Brighton-Le-Sands
‘I saw them drag the body from the water into the boat and that’s when the partner dashed into the water,’ Mr Benjamin recalled.
‘They tried so hard to resuscitate him, they probably worked on him for 20 minutes. The diver that found the body looked distraught, absolutely gutted that they couldn’t save him.’
Hundreds of onlookers packed the beach and boardwalk as emergency crews, the St George Local Area Command, Sydney Water Police and Surf Lifesavers tried in vain to save the man.
‘Then suddenly the boat went dark…His partner just collapsed onto her knees and had to be comforted by police.’
Three police divers entered the water at Brighton-Le-Sands to search for the missing man
Crowds gathered well into the evening in hope the man would be found alive
Witness Henry Benjamin praised the police diver who never gave up searching for the diver
The diver’s distraught partner was still with police when Mr Benjamin left the beach, saying that it was just too hard to keep watching the tragedy unfold.
‘It’s such a calm beach and I’ve never seen anything happen like that,’ he said. ‘It was terrible, hearing her scream and watching the police diver swim up and down, never giving up.
‘He must have been underwater for at least an hour, there’s no way that he could have survived. But they tried to save him, I can tell you that.
‘They worked really, really hard to save him.’
Emergency crews including the St George Local Area Command, Sydney Water Police and Surf Lifesavers tried in vain to save the man