One fisherman Majaliwa Jackson, who was among the first responders at the site of Sunday plane crash that killed 19 people in Tanzania Lake Victoria, has narrated how he tried to save the pilot from the cockpit and nearly lost his life in the process. Speaking in an interview from his hospital bed, Majaliwa Jackson said that he panicked when he saw a passenger plane approached from the wrong direction before diving into the lake.
To this he rushed to the scene with three other fishermen, and helped opened the back door to rescue passengers that sat towards the back of the plane. Jackson stated that later on, he moved to the front and dived into the water where he saw one of the pilots who communicated with him through the cockpit window using signs and directed him to break the window screen. The fisherman said be came out of the water and asked the airport security who had arrived for any tool to break the screen.
He said he was given an axe, but as he made his way to dive back into the water, a man with public address system stopped him. Jackson revealed that the man said they had already communicated with the pilots and that there was no leakage in the cockpit. According to Jackson, after he was stopped from breaking the screen, he dived back into the water to wave goodbye to the pilot, but the pilot showed sign that he wanted to be rescued.
He said the pilot pointed out a cockpit emergency door. He went back and came back with a rope, tied it on the door and tried to pull it with other boats. Unfortunately, the rope disengaged, hit him on the face and knocked him unconscious. He added that the next thing he knew was waking up in a hospital bed. Out of 43 people that boarded the Precision air plane, only 24 survived.
Credit: BBC NEWS PIDGIN
