FROM LEFT: Village hero Gabriel Smart and Government Minister Saboto Caesar, who is the area representative walking along the Sans Souci beach towards the point where the actual rescue took off (photo by Robertson S. Henry)
Last Tuesday morning, September 23, 2025, at Sans Souci, Gabriel Smart recounted to the media the harrowing experience he went through on Sunday, September, 21, 2025, when he saved Kishorn Pope, a 12-year-old boy, from drowning. It was another youngster who had run to seek help for his friend in distress.
Smart, also known as Webb, alongside his sister Narissa Smart said, “I was home and the young guy come and he start to call, so when I come out I saw him, so I say ‘what happened’? so he tell me now he and his friend was on the rock and his friend dropped off the rock and water come up and lick him up”.
Smart related how he ran into the house, grabbed a length of rope he had been coiling… “then I get a old cooler because I said ‘it get some kind of foam in there, it might go float’, you know.”
He grabbed the item and ran with the youngster who had brought the news, to try and render assistance.
Smart and the friend climbed the rock near a place called Blow Hole, and upon getting to the top, he was able to grasp the scary situation. He saw Pope in the water, and thought how he would be able to reach him. He then asked the friend to call the SVG Coast Guard base and ask for assistance.
Meanwhile, Smart recalled that he was “watching the youth there in the water, just fighting for his life”.
“Seeing the situation, I see like he not going to be there for too long, he might die. So, I start to think and I tell the youth, I say boy, run back and get something for me to float because I didn’t want to come back to the land with him”; the cooler was not useful for the mammoth task at hand.
Smart said he had to ask the youngster and another person to go back to get another item that would float.
Soon after, he saw a few residents running with the door of a refrigerator. They tore off the piece of metal to the front and tested the old ‘fridge door, “and me say ‘boy this could work’ and me just jump in and start to swim out”.
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