Cork heroes including teenager, surfers and gardaí to be honoured for their bravery
Carlos Amaya (left) and Aaron O'Callaghan (right) receiving the SEIKO Just In Time Awards and Rescue Appreciation Awards at Water Safety Ireland's National Awards Ceremony in October. They will also be honoured at a special ceremony in Dublin on Friday. Photo: Sam Boal/Collins Photos
A teenager who bravely entered the water to try to save a friend and two gardaí who rescued a man from a burning building are just some of the Cork heroes to be honoured at a special ceremony in Dublin on Friday.
In all, 23 National Bravery Awards will be issued to people around the country who risked their lives to aid others in peril.
The annual honours are awarded by Comhairle na Míre Gaile, the Deeds of Bravery Council, which was founded in 1947 to allow for State recognition for exceptional acts of bravery.
This year’s recipients are from Clare, Cork, Dublin, Galway, Waterford, Westmeath and Wexford.
They include 15-year-old David Akar, from Cork. On August 24 last year, a group of young people were swimming at the mooring pontoons at Mariners Quay in Passage West when some got caught in a very strong current.
David attempted to help his friends and pushed one boy back to the safety of the pontoons before trying to assist another friend who was struggling badly.
Despite the strength of the current, David swam back to his other friend and tried to drag, push and pull him back to safety, but as the other young boy grew tired and began to panic, they both went under, and David lost his grip.
Although David had done some lifeguard training, he was just shy of his 14th birthday and was unable to pull his friend against the strong current. Nevertheless, he managed to get hold of him again and began to pull him towards a small boat, but once again the current took hold and David lost his grip on his friend.
David swam to the boat and climbed in, crying out to his other friends to get help. When David couldn’t see his friend in the water, he dived under repeatedly trying to locate him, but tragically he was unable to do so. Despite David’s tireless efforts, the young boy, also aged just 14, lost his life.
For his actions that day, he is being awarded a gold medal and a certificate of bravery.
When a riptide took hold of a father and his two teenage children on March 17, 2024, Aaron O’Callaghan and Carlos Amaya came to their rescue.
Aaron had been surfing at Garretstown Beach on a day with good swells and big waves when he heard screaming from the edge of the beach. Out in the water, caught in a severe riptide were a man and his two children, barely keeping afloat.
As Aaron paddled towards them Carlos had just finished giving a surf lesson but heard the shouting and plunged into the water with his board. When Aaron got through the current, he managed to get hold of the group and keep them afloat with his board.
As they were tired and cold they were struggling desperately by the time Carlos got to the scene. Aaron then took the father on his surfboard and Carlos took the children on his. Both Carlos and Aaron then swam alongside, pushing the family safely to shore through the rough seas.
Reporting gardaí noted that if the two men had not reacted the way they did, there could have been an “unthinkable tragedy”.
Around 11.30am on the morning of Wednesday, January 3, the driver of a car on the busy South Ring Road in Cork, suffered a cardiac arrest. With the man unconscious in his seat, the car began to swerve along the road. His passenger Walter Murphy attempted to take control of the car, but the driver's foot remained on the accelerator and the car kept going.
Several cars passed including a car driven by brothers Oleg and Veaceslav Coronciuc who noticed the driver slumped over the wheel and decided to intervene. Recognising the danger, they pulled their car in front of the out-of-control vehicle and began to slow down, allowing the other car to bump into their own as they slowly braked.
In the out-of-control car Walter Murphy attempted to steer to prevent pushing the Coronciuc brothers’ car off the edge of the road or into more traffic. With a large volume of traffic passing the risk of a catastrophic collision was prevented as together the three men forced the car to slow and finally come to a stop.
Tragically, the driver was later pronounced dead, but it was noted by gardaí that the actions of the three men undoubtedly prevented a serious road traffic incident on this busy road.
These gardaí were on patrol in the early hours of April 14, 2021, when they noticed a fire in the derelict part of a semi-detached house in Knocknaheeny in Cork.
They alerted the fire brigade and began evacuating nearby residents. It became apparent that the adjoining part of the house was occupied by an elderly man and with the roof ablaze and the fire spreading, the two officers made the decision to try and force the door.
Together they forced the door and gained entry to the building, which was now filling with smoke. They managed to get to the bedroom of the elderly man who had woken with the sound of the door breaking.
As the fire raged in the adjoining property it spread across the roof and was burning the shared wall between the two buildings, which was in danger of collapse. Despite the smoke and heat from the fire, Joseph and Denis safely evacuated the man from the building and took him to safety, before several units of the fire-brigade arrived to bring the blaze under control.
The awards are to be presented by Ceann Comhairle Seán Ó Fearghaíl at an event in Farmleigh House later on Friday.
“This November day in Farmleigh is a day when we celebrate people who have made the world feel a little less dark, a little less dangerous and whose actions speak to the very best and noblest of impulses,” he said.
“This singular day marks moments where self-preservation was cast aside by our brave recipients as they risked their lives to help someone else.
“These moments matter, because in many cases, lives were saved that would have been lost. They matter because even when people were lost, in some of the awful tragedies we remember today, those people were not alone.
“They would have known and their families know, that someone was with them, someone was bravely and desperately trying to save them, to bring them home.”
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