Duangphet Phromthep, certainly one of 12 boys rescued from a Thai collapse 2018, dies in UK | CNN

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Duangphet Phromthep, one of many 12 boys rescued from a flooded Thai cave after a weekslong operation that drew international 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 mentioned in an announcement to CNN.

Th northern regional department of the Thai authorities’s public relations arm mentioned on Fb that Phromthep, 17, died attributable to an accident, with out offering extra particulars.

“The ambiance at his home in Chiang Rai province was stuffed with sorrow,” PR Thailand’s assertion mentioned.

Zico Basis, a Thai non-profit group which had helped Phromthep research within the UK through a soccer scholarship, wrote on Fb Wednesday: “Zico Basis wish to specific our sorrow for the go of Dom Duangpet Phromthep, a scholarship scholar from Zico basis,” posting an image of Phromthep.

Phromthep was the captain of the Wild Boars youth soccer group 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 situations, with fast-moving shallow water passing by way of very slender passages.

In a sophisticated three-day ultimate 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 way of murky tunnels. Every rescue took a number of hours, with a lot of the time spent underneath water.

Probably the most harmful half was the primary kilometer, throughout which the divers and boys had been required to squeeze by way of a slender, flooded channel.

Rescuers wanted to carry the boys’ oxygen tanks in entrance of them and swim pencil-like by way of submerged holes. Having accomplished this part, the boys had been then handed over to separate, specialist rescue groups, who helped help them by way of the rest of the cave, a lot of which they might wade by way of.

Phromthep, often called 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 certainly one of three boys whose birthdays slipped by whereas they had been deep underground. In his first message to his mother and father he implored them to not neglect. “I’m fantastic, however the climate is sort of chilly. However don’t fear,” he mentioned. “Don’t neglect my birthday,” he mentioned.

From hospital, after his rescue, he mentioned he wished 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.

Relations 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 dying, Prajak Sutham, one of many Thai cave survivors, wrote on Fb: “We’ve got been by way of collectively so much, good and unhealthy occasions. We had went by way of life and dying conditions collectively, whenever you informed me to attend and see the time you grew to become a nationwide participant. I at all times believed that you can do it. Final time we met earlier than you left to UK, I jokingly informed you that, whenever you’re again I’d 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, informed CNN’s Don Riddell that he was shocked on the information, and mentioned 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 skin world,” he mentioned 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 total weight of accountability in the direction of his survival by way of probably 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 School, the college which Phromthep attended as a Soccer Academy scholar, mentioned in an announcement that his dying “has left our faculty neighborhood deeply saddened and shaken.”

“This occasion has left our faculty neighborhood deeply saddened and shaken. We unite in grief with all of Dom’s household, buddies, former teammates and people concerned in all elements of his life, in addition to everybody affected in any approach by this loss in Thailand and all through the faculty’s international household,” the faculty’s principal, Ian Smith, mentioned.

In keeping with the assertion, Brooke Home School is liaising with statutory authorities and the Royal Thai Embassy in London, and “dedicating all sources to help our scholar physique, as they as younger individuals course of Dom’s passing.”