Rhon­dor Dowlat-Ros­tant

Arch­bish­op Ja­son Gor­don was able to pray for drown­ing vic­tim Lyn­don Clement last week mo­ments af­ter his death hav­ing un­suc­cess­ful­ly tried to re­sus­ci­tate him.

Gor­don was at the dioce­san re­treat house in Blan­chisseuse last Fri­day when he re­spond­ed to shouts for help from peo­ple on the beach when Clement got in­to dif­fi­cul­ty and lat­er at­tempt­ed CPR on the vic­tim. How­ev­er, Clement, 27, of Ari­ma, sub­se­quent­ly died.

In con­firm­ing the in­ci­dent with Guardian Me­dia on Sun­day, Gor­don said af­ter on check­ing for a pulse while ad­min­is­ter­ing CPR and get­ting no re­sponse, he prayed for Clement and his soul and asked: “God’s mer­cy up­on him.”

Clement was re­port­ed­ly swim­ming when he got in­to dif­fi­cul­ty and dis­ap­peared un­der the wa­ter at Surf’s Beach, Dami­an Bay, de­spite the then on­go­ing re­stric­tion on bathing at beach­es due to the COVID-19 pan­dem­ic.

Gor­don deal with the mat­ter in an ar­ti­cle which was pub­lished on the Catholic News’ web­site over the week­end. Con­tact­ed yes­ter­day on the mat­ter, Gor­don con­firmed the in­ci­dent and re­ferred the T&T Guardian to his re­lease to the Catholic News.

In the ar­ti­cle, Gor­don re­called, “While on the ve­ran­dah, I heard some noise from the wa­ter and looked out to see what was hap­pen­ing. There were two men who seemed to be tread­ing wa­ter far from the shore who were about 20 feet apart drift­ing west­ward. One man ap­peared to be in dis­tress. I left the house and went to the beach where some peo­ple or­gan­ised a boo­gie board and a tow­line to res­cue the man. When they brought him on­to the beach, I cleared his throat and be­gan to ad­min­is­ter CPR.”

While ad­min­is­ter­ing CPR, Gor­don said he asked those around to con­tact the Blan­chisseuse Health Cen­tre.

“The po­lice were the first to ar­rive. Then the nurse ar­rived. I gave the po­lice the in­for­ma­tion I had and re­turned to the house.”

Gor­don told Catholic News that it is al­ways a tragedy to see some­one lose their life.

“The sense of help­less­ness when you can­not reach in time. Yes­ter­day’s (Fri­day) in­ci­dent was trag­ic, it was dif­fi­cult, but I am okay.”

The Arch­bish­op of­fered con­do­lences to Clement’s chil­dren and fam­i­ly and lat­er prayed for him at Mass on Fri­day evening.

Po­lice of­fi­cers who re­spond­ed to the in­ci­dent said Clement and three friends had dri­ven to the beach and while the oth­ers opt­ed to stay out of the chop­py wa­ters, Clement still made the de­ci­sion to go for a swim. Clement, who was a fa­ther of two girls, was em­ployed as a se­cu­ri­ty of­fi­cer. His fam­i­ly al­so said they did not know he had gone to the beach that day.