Tourist Carl Edwards posted on Phuketwan's Facebook: ''My wife and I had just arrived at Karon this morning. I headed straight out for a swim. Sea conditions were very calm with only a few stronger waves rolling in. I think it was the third or fourth of these larger waves that drove the body past me and up onto the beach about 30 meters away from me. Before I had gotten out of the water a Thai female was running and screaming down the beach towards the lifeless body on the shoreline, this is when a foreign male pulled the victim further up on the beach and began CPR."


PHUKET: A lifeguard from a five-star Phuket resort has died after being pulled from the sea at Phuket's Karon beach today.

The man, aged 43, was trying to swim back to the beach after helping a guest at the Centara Grand Beach Resort Phuket to try kitesurfing offshore.

The resort, the only one with a direct frontage onto the popular Phuket beach, south of Patong, has two lifeguards to protect guests in the sea at the northern end of Karon.

Regular lifeguards, who patrol the rest of the long beach, rushed to help a Centara lifeguard perform cpr on his stricken colleague about 11am.

A tourist swimming near the resort spotted the lifeguard in the water and helped him back to the sand, Phuketwan has been told.

An ambulance called to the scene did not arrive for 20 minutes, according to the owner of a beach restaurant nearby.

The man had a faint pulse and died soon after in Patong Hospital.

The Centara Grand marked its first anniversary last month. Most five-star resorts on or close to Phuket beaches employ their own lifeguards.