The ten-year-old Jamy Schuurmans from Helvoirt does not consider herself a hero, but she is. Especially in the eyes of his bosom friend Xander. In the winter months it sank through the ice and went under in a deep ditch. Jamy didn’t think twice and sprang into action. That is why he received a youth ribbon from the mayor of Vught this week.
Jamy can still remember what happened: “We were playing on the grass behind Xander’s house. Next to that grass was a deep ditch. My friend then slipped and fell on the ice and then fell through it.”
“It didn’t work at first, but eventually I got it out.”
The ditch was so deep that Xander couldn’t stand and couldn’t get out. “He said, ‘Get my mother, get my mother’. I then said: ‘No, because then you will sink.’” He managed to pull the much larger Xander out of the water himself. “I lay on my stomach and held out my hand. At first it didn’t work, but eventually I got it out.”
The boys ran home with tears streaming down their cheeks. Xander’s mother showered the boys to warm up. “Fortunately, Xander had his brother’s boots on, but they still smell,” Jamy laughs about that now.
After such a heroic action you naturally grow closer to each other. “We’re still friends, but we’re not in the same class anymore.” The sign of true friendship for a ten-year-old.
His mother hadn’t really realized what had happened at first. “He did say that Xander had fallen into the water, but otherwise not really that great. Until he came back to it later and I found out how intense it actually was,” says Jamy’s mother Amy.
“I bought a Pokémon game.”
Not only his mother, but also the mayor thinks that Jaimy has performed a real heroic deed. And that’s why Jamy received a youth ribbon on Wednesday and the mayor came to visit him in class. “We didn’t tell Jamy on purpose, because otherwise he would be awake at night,” says his mother.
In addition to the ribbon, which he is only allowed to wear on King’s Day, Jaimy also received a gift voucher. And he was able to put it to good use the same day. “I bought a Pokémon game.”