Last Saturday, three days later, a French teenager was rescued disappeared while diving for Malaysia† A Briton who belonged to the same group was also found. The latter’s 14-year-old son, “too weak…didn’t survive,” said a Coast Guard statement, citing the father.
The group, accompanied by a Norwegian instructor, had been diving for about 40 minutes at sea on Wednesday near an archipelago in southern Malaysia. But when the divers surfaced, they couldn’t see their boat and drifted in the strong current.
Briton Adrian Peter Chesters, 46, and Frenchwoman Alexandra Molina, 18, were spotted by fishermen and rescued by police, local police chief Cyril Eward Nuing said. “They survived and are in the hospital in stable condition,” he told a news conference. They were found in the southern state of Johor, far from where they initially began their dive, before being taken to hospital.
The teen was initially missing and police decided to focus their efforts further south, towards Singapore and neighboring Indonesia. But eventually she interrupted her search, concluding that he had drifted into Indonesian waters and claiming she had informed her counterparts in the archipelago.
The captain of the boat arrested
Their dive instructor, Kristine Grodem, 35, was rescued Thursday after being discovered at sea by a passing boat, also a considerable distance from where the group disappeared on Wednesday. She was picked up by a helicopter used for the search and taken to the nearby Mersing district before being hospitalized in stable condition.
Authorities did not provide details on how the three rescued people survived. But they say the light rains seen in recent days may have helped the divers.
Helicopters, boats and several dozen divers took part in the search. Police also revealed that the captain of the boat that took them to the diving area had been arrested after testing positive for drugs.
The instructor had taken the group to a collection of small islands, Pulau Tokong Sanggol, about 15 kilometers off the coast when the accident happened. The area where they disappeared is popular with tourists.
