On Saturday night Jimi Olubunmi-Adewole joined a “roll-call of gentle, tragic heroism”, says Sarah Vine in the Daily Mail. The 20-year-old drowned trying to save a woman – “a total stranger” – who had fallen into the Thames from London Bridge. Stories like this “restore our faith in the power and goodness of the human heart”. Hearing her cries, he and a friend dived in. The friend was saved, as was the woman. Jimi couldn’t be found. “I can’t even begin to imagine the grief his parents must be feeling.” But their son should be honoured for what he did, because people like him don’t just save one person: “They save all of us – spiritually, mentally and emotionally.”
I think of Darryn Frost, a civil servant at the Ministry of Justice who, when Usman Khan launched his knife attack at Fishmongers’ Hall in 2019, took a narwhal tusk off the wall and pursued the terrorist. Or Patrick Hutchinson, a black fiftysomething fitness instructor who strode into a BLM protest last summer to rescue a white troublemaker when he was injured. “Some people asked me why I bothered saving him, and I understand their frustration,” he said afterwards. “But my natural instinct is to protect the vulnerable.” Heroes like that are rare, but they inspire us. Jimi’s death came from a place of true goodness. “His bravery and moral altruism shine like a beacon in the dark.”
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