Two police officers who entered freezing waters in Highbridge to search for a child feared to have fallen into a lake have been recognised with Bravery Awards.
In November 2024, Sgt Joe Pitman and a colleague responded to a 999 call from a distressed child who claimed her nine-year-old friend had fallen into Morland Lake, a deep former clay pit off Morland Road, reported here.
“The girl on the 999 call seemed quite distressed, and was saying, ‘My friend’s fallen’,” said Sgt Pitman. “She indicated a rough area of the lake, but there were no signs of splashing. I looked at my colleague and said, ‘We’re going to have to go in’.”
“We visually scanned the lake for any obvious signs of the child, but there wasn’t any splashing. I looked at my colleague and said, ‘We’re going to have to go in’, because if there was a child in that lake, they were under the water.
“So we took off our body armour and boots and got in the water.”
And so they plunged into the cold depths of the lake, thought to be at the Apex Leisure Park.
“My colleague is a much better cold water swimmer than I am, I’ll give him that,” Sgt Pitman went on. “The temperature got to me straight away. It was horrendous, really freezing cold.
“Other emergency services arrived on the scene with more specialised equipment to do an underwater search.”
Then, after 19 minutes or so, the little girl said her story wasn’t true. There wasn’t a child in the water.
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However, despite the call being a false alarm, the actions of the two officers involved have been recognised with Bravery Awards at the 2025 Avon & Somerset Police Federation Recognition Awards.
The child – and their family – were spoken to by officers to “educate to prevent a repeat occurrence”.
Sgt Pitman went on: “It’s nice to be recognised. I’d like to think that any officer in that situation would have done the same thing, ultimately.
“As a father myself, it’s a parent’s worst nightmare. If we hadn’t gone into the water that day, we wouldn’t have been doing our duty effectively.”
Avon & Somerset Police Federation chair, Tom Gent, said: “With the cold temperature and wintry conditions that day, the officers felt like they had no choice but to enter the water immediately in order to save a life.
“That it turned out to be a hoax does not change the bravery and resilience the officers showed that day.”
Sgt Pitman and his colleague are set to receive the accolades at the Avon & Somerset Police Federation Recognition Awards ceremony on October 9th.
