Coach escorted girl from pool before drowning
He saw her walking towards a flowerbed where she was to wait for her parents
A swimming coach was adamant yesterday that he had escorted one of his swimming students, later found drowned, from the swimming pool at the end of her lesson.
Leung Chak-man, 26, told Coroner Michael Chan he was bewildered by the drowning of six-year-old Jenissa Fung Si-wing at the South Horizon clubhouse swimming pool in Ap Lei Chau.
She drowned just minutes after she was seen walking towards the flowerbed where she was told to wait for her parents.
The drowning occurred at about 4pm on April 3 last year, when Jenissa and two other students finished a beginners' class with Mr Leung.
The lesson ended with Mr Leung dipping each of the students into the deep end of the pool to let them experience the feel of deeper water.
'When the time was up, I told the three of them to go and leave the water, using the ladder to go up to reach the ground,' he said in response to questions from senior counsel for the government Lily Ho May-yu.
'A student surnamed Chu was first in the queue; a Pakistani girl came second. Then came the deceased girl, and I was behind her to make sure that all three left the pool.
'As she went towards the flowerbed, I was following at a distance of about three to four metres.'
Based on his teaching experience in the previous two years, Mr Leung said he had presumed that Jenissa, like many of his previous students, would wait at the flowerbed for her parents.
'Unless she had gone back into the pool by herself,' Mr Leung speculated.
Another coach, Leung Shu-ming, who was teaching a more senior class in the same pool at the same time, said students often wanted to stay in the pool area after their lessons finished.
'In my class on that day, two students left the pool and two others stayed on to swim a little while longer,' he said.
Mr Leung Chak-man said some students wanted to use the hot Jacuzzi pool for 10 minutes before leaving that day and had obtained permission from their parents.
Kou In-leng, the mother of one of the students at the pool, was at the scene of the drowning and said she and other witnesses had to clap loudly and wave their hands to attract the attention of lifeguards watching over the 25-metre pool, who had not noticed the girl in distress.
But by the time Jenissa was dragged from the pool she was unconscious.
Mouth-to-mouth resuscitation was promptly performed by Mr Leung Shu-ming, but foam was oozing from her mouth and her breathing had ceased, although a weak pulse could be felt.
Pathologist Lau Ming-fai said a postmortem examination confirmed Jenissa died from drowning.
