British Doctor Killed In Australia Jet Ski Crash

A British doctor on holiday in Australia was killed and his wife injured today when the jet ski they were riding ploughed into a moored pleasure boat off the coast of Queensland.

Dr Sridhar Shekar, 31, from Leeds, who is thought never to have used a jet ski before the accident, hit the anchor chain of the 8m motorboat and was thrown on to a sandbank on the Gold Coast, south of Brisbane.

His wife and bystanders scrambled to give her husband first aid but he died at the scene having broken his pelvis and sustained head and upper body injuries. His wife, Dr Divya Patel, who was the pillion passenger, was taken to hospital and treated for shock and minor injuries.

The owner of the boat was on board at the time and also suffered shock.

Police said it was possible that Dr Shekar’s inexperience had been the cause of the incident.

It can be very difficult to drive a jet ski,” Senior Sergeant Mark Kelly, of Gold Coast Water Police, said. “I believe the person, it may have been his first time on the jet ski.”

The couple had been on holiday and had hired the jet ski for half an hour from an operator on the Broadwater, a popular stretch of ocean for boating enthusiasts.

Dr Shekar, who is believed to have qualified at the University of Mysore in India before moving to Britain, was a senior house officer in rheumatology at Bradford Teaching Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust. His wife is a GP in Bradford. The couple, who have no children, had been enjoying a lengthy holiday which started with a trip to Scotland at Easter.

Staff at Shane’s Watersports World, the hire company, said they had warned Dr Shekar just minutes before the accident that he was steering too close to a boat and that he must keep at least 100m away.

“He had done a couple of circuits of the course already, our staff had warned him that he was going too close to a moored boat,” Trevor Gibson, part owner of the business, said.

“He had only just been told that. He left the beach and then he more or less drove straight into it.” The company’s website says that the A$75 price of a half-hour ride includes instructions on safety both written and orally and a qualified instructor is present at all times.

James Hornabrook and his wife Sandy had been walking their dogs when they heard a loud noise and turned to see the jet ski cutting through the water with no one on board.

“I thought he (Dr Shekar) must have just been knocked off,” Mrs Hornabrook said. “It wasn’t until we saw people trying to do CPR (cardiopulmonary resuscitation) on him that we knew it was pretty serious.” Mr Hornabrook said that so many jet skis used the Broadwater he believed accidents were almost inevitable.

The website of Jet Ski Community News says that 83 per cent of all jet ski infringement notices in Queensland were on the Gold Coast.

“With almost 30,000 registered boats in such a small area, collisions are the highest in the state,” it says.

The accident prompted Anna Bligh, the state’s Premier, to announce a review of jet-ski safety regulations to ensure they were adequate.

“We expect that our tourists will be involved in adventure and sometimes quite risky behaviour, but we also need to satisfy ourselves that all reasonable care has been taken by the operator,” she said. “This investigation will assist us to determine whether we need to toughen up any of the regulation of this industry.” Fatalities are relatively rare but last September a nine-year-old girl was killed and her ten-year-old friend injured when a jet ski they were riding hit a navigational marker off Bribie Island, north of Brisbane.

That same month, a man was awarded almost A$600,000 in damages for injuries he sustained in a jet ski accident at a resort on South Stradbroke Island, off the Gold Coast, in 2001.

Between July 2001 and June 2005 there were 89 serious marine incidents involving jet skis in Queensland, with 23 serious injuries and two fatalities.

In Leeds neighbours of the couple, who are originally from south India, said he would be greatly missed. Meena Matharu, 37, said: “They were a very outgoing couple who were cheerful and helpful whenever they could be. They were always laughing and joking, making people smile.”

Another neighbour, retired hospital consultant Dr Chumbempakserry Gopakumar, 68, said Mr Shekar came from a very wealthy Bangalore family. He added: “He was a nice guy, a very good man. He was a very jovial man, very friendly. They were only recently married.”

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