A YOUNG man from Bowness has praised the 'team effort' that saved the life of a man who jumped into Windermere with rocks in his rucksack.

Sam Lupton, 22, had been working as pierman for Windermere Lakes Cruises when the incident took place.

He had been in the ticket office at work and and had heard on the radio from one of the skippers that somebody had gone into the water.

"Myself and a couple of other colleagues ran out and saw this man in the water," he said. "Initially we threw a life ring in because we thought he'd just fallen in."

Sam and Stuart Newbould jumped into the water but had difficulty getting hold of the man who had jumped because his arms were 'going everywhere'.

The man then became unconscious and Sam proceeded to drag him under the pier and up to the shoreline.

"Myself, another member of staff and a member of the public dragged him out of the water and a member of the public performed CPR," he said.

"At the time of it you don't really think too much about it, you just think what can I do now," he said. "Even at the point I was dragging him to the shoreline, his face was blue, he wasn't moving at all, so from that point of view it was really quite startling. It was such a normal day up until that point, that was the big shock. All of a sudden you're in this life threatening situation with this guy."

He said that he was 'confident' in his abilities to help and that it was 'worth' putting himself at some risk to help save a person's life.

Sam added that the management team at Windermere Lakes Cruises had stayed in touch with the man's family and he was recovering well.