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‘I CAN’T BREATHE, I CAN’T BREATHE’
THIS is the horrific moment a banana boat flipped over, killing a British grandmother.
Janice Bowles, 58, from Bristol, died after being thrown into the water in Hurghada, Egypt - despite desperate efforts to save her.
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Her death happened on August 21 - exactly a week after a British couple were mysteriously found dead in their hotel room in the same resort.
A video taken by the family shows the inflatable being towed by the boat, with Janice and her daughter Hannah Barcroft, 36, sitting in the front two seats.
As they are towed, the driver waves his hands in the air then leans over the side of the banana boat before tragedy strikes.
“First of all he lifted both hands up above his head and then turned round and was doing ‘no hands, no hands’,” said Hannah.
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“He then put his hands on the steering wheel and then he leaned over to the side of the boat so his side was practically touching the water.
“After that he put his hands back on the steering wheel. Not long after he got back holding the boat, it went under. We all flew off in different directions.
“I don’t know what happened to my mum. What I do know is that I was trapped under the water.
“Hindsight is an amazing thing and I keep saying to myself, 'Why didn’t I take my life jacket off and swim towards my mum faster, that might have stopped her from dying'.
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“But when I got there she was saying, ‘I can’t breathe, I can’t breathe’. I was shouting for help saying, ‘My mama, my mama’ and I was crying and screaming.
“The driver holds on to the top of the life jacket and then I’m trying to lift her up but there’s nothing to hold on to and I’m going, ‘Help her, help her’ then her mouth went under the water.”
After being in the water for five to ten minutes, Janice was dragged on to the speedboat but “by that time her lips were blue” as passengers desperately performed CPR on her.
“I was saying, ‘She’s dead, she’s dead'. There was a man who had been in army and he was asking about medication.”
Janice was taken to another boat before she was taken to the marina.
She was then driven into an ambulance to hospital while CPR continued to be administered to her and tubes were inserted into her nose.
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“I was slapping her forearms and saying, ‘Mama please wake up’," said Hannah.
"But as soon as we got to the hospital, five minutes later they said, ‘Sorry she’s dead’.
“I said I need to be with my mum but they said, 'Passport, health insurance’. Once I got them they gave me five minutes to say goodbye to my mum.
“I wanted to hug her but it didn’t work so I climbed on top of her and I put her arms above my head and I said, ‘Please don’t leave me’.
“They dragged me off her body and said, ‘Enough time, enough time’ and I said, ‘No, it’s my mum’.”
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A witness told the Sun Online: "I could hear the woman's daughter wailing, as she knew that there was something seriously wrong with her mum.
"They got the lady back on an they were doing chest compressions, but at no point were there any breaths given.
"I'm screaming at them, 'Open her airways' but they pushed me back."
Hannah was on holiday with her sister Lauren Greenwood, her partner and three children, who went home, and her other sister then came out.
But she that while “there were English people and Egyptian people looking after me, no-one from Thomas Cook did”.
Hannah is still in Egypt as she arranges for her mum’s body to be flown back.
In the meantime, the family have hired a local lawyer to help them, though they did that with help from relatives at home rather than with the help of Thomas Cook or the British consulate.
They have also to help with the funeral costs of Janice, a mother of four and grandmother of 16.
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Hannah said her mum, an animal lover who was a former lollipop lady, would sing her grandchildren “little rhymes before they went to bed at night, they loved their nana”.
Hannah said her family have been left distraught by Janice’s death.
“She was just an amazing person who would do anything to help," she said.
A Thomas Cook spokesman said: “We can confirm that one of our customers sadly died last week while on an excursion in Egypt.
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"We would like to offer our sincere condolences to the family, and our welfare team continue to do all they can to support them at this time.
"We are urgently investigating what happened.”
The Foreign Office confirmed the death of a woman in the Egypt holiday resort.
A spokesman said: “Our staff are assisting the family of a British woman who has died in Hurghada.”
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