London
CNN
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Duangphet Phromthep, one of many 12 boys rescued from a flooded Thai cave after a weekslong operation that drew world consideration in 2018, has died within the UK, British and Thai officers introduced Wednesday.
Phromthep, who was enrolled in a soccer academy in Leicestershire, England, died after being rushed to hospital on Sunday, Leicestershire Police stated in a press release to CNN.
Th northern regional department of the Thai authorities’s public relations arm stated on Fb that Phromthep, 17, died as a result of an accident, with out offering extra particulars.
“The environment at his home in Chiang Rai province was stuffed with sorrow,” PR Thailand’s assertion stated.
Zico Basis, a Thai non-profit group which had helped Phromthep examine within the UK through a soccer scholarship, wrote on Fb Wednesday: “Zico Basis wish to categorical our sorrow for the move of Dom Duangpet Phromthep, a scholarship scholar from Zico basis,” posting an image of Phromthep.
The miraculous story of the Thai cave rescue
Phromthep was the captain of the Wild Boars youth soccer crew wdhich was rescued after being trapped for greater than two weeks in a flooded cave community within the northern Thai province of Chiang Rai in the summertime of 2018.
The 12 boys and their coach grew to become trapped when rising flood water lower them off deep contained in the cave, sparking what grew to become a close to three-week worldwide rescue effort.
Divers concerned within the rescue described treacherous circumstances, with fast-moving shallow water passing by very slender passages.
In an advanced three-day remaining operation, the boys had been break up into teams of 4 and supplied with 5-millimeter-thick wetsuits, full face masks respiration equipment and air bottles.
Every boy was taken out by two divers, who carried their oxygen tanks and guided them by murky tunnels. Every rescue took a number of hours, with a lot of the time spent below water.
Essentially the most harmful half was the primary kilometer, throughout which the divers and boys had been required to squeeze by a slender, flooded channel.
Rescuers wanted to carry the boys’ oxygen tanks in entrance of them and swim pencil-like by submerged holes. Having accomplished this part, the boys had been then handed over to separate, specialist rescue groups, who helped help them by the rest of the cave, a lot of which they might wade by.
Phromthep, often known as Dom, left the cave as a part of the second group of boys carried out on greater than two weeks after they had been first trapped. He was one in all three boys whose birthdays slipped by whereas they had been deep underground. In his first message to his dad and mom he implored them to not overlook. “I’m superb, however the climate is kind of chilly. However don’t fear,” he stated. “Don’t overlook my birthday,” he stated.
From hospital, after his rescue, he stated he needed pork and rice to eat and thanked everybody for all their assist.
All 12 of the rescued boys and their coach had been then transported to a close-by hospital for recuperation.
Members of the family greeted the information of their rescue with aid and tears of happiness, punching the air once they heard that their boys had been alive.
Reacting to Phromthep’s demise, Prajak Sutham, one of many Thai cave survivors, wrote on Fb: “We have now been by collectively so much, good and dangerous occasions. We had went by life and demise conditions collectively, whenever you instructed me to attend and see the time you grew to become a nationwide participant. I at all times believed that you possibly can do it. Final time we met earlier than you left to UK, I jokingly instructed you that, whenever you’re again I might ask on your signature. Relaxation in Peace Bro, we at all times have one another, the 13 of us.”
Rick Stanton, the lead diver from the 2018 rescue mission, instructed CNN’s Don Riddell that he was shocked on the information, and stated that fellow rescuers had been knowledgeable.
“When John Volanthen and I first discovered the Wild Boars on the finish of a fraught 9 day search, it was Dom who took the lead and wrote the primary messages to the surface world,” he stated in an e-mail.
“As a private recollection, it was Dom whose unconscious physique I swam with as I escorted him to security on the second day of the rescue mission. I fastidiously held his treasured life in my grasp, bearing the complete weight of duty in direction of his survival by essentially the most excessive of circumstances.”
The Doi Wao temple in his hometown in Chiang Rai additionally expressed their condolences to Phromthep’s mom.
Brooke Home Faculty, the college which Phromthep attended as a Soccer Academy scholar, stated in a press release that his demise “has left our faculty group deeply saddened and shaken.”
“This occasion has left our faculty group deeply saddened and shaken. We unite in grief with all of Dom’s household, pals, former teammates and people concerned in all components of his life, in addition to everybody affected in any means by this loss in Thailand and all through the school’s world household,” the school’s principal, Ian Smith, stated.
In line with the assertion, Brooke Home Faculty is liaising with statutory authorities and the Royal Thai Embassy in London, and “dedicating all assets to help our scholar physique, as they as younger folks course of Dom’s passing.”
