KATHMANDU, Dec 30: The body of a Nepalese nurse who went missing while caring for a 10-year-old disabled boy was found washed ashore at an Adelaide beach on Saturday, the Australian newspaper reported.
Grave fears had been held for Nischal Ghimire, a 22-year-old nurse from Nepal, after the boy, drenched and naked, knocked on the door of a Glenelg home at 12.30am yesterday and was taken in by residents, the newspaper said in its report.
Mr Ghimire was unable to swim, prompting a large search of Glenelg North Beach, where he and the boy visited at 4pm on Thursday.
South Australian police last night confirmed they had found Mr Ghimire’s body washed up on a boat ramp at West Beach near the Adelaide Airport, the report added.
Zac Curnow, who lives on North Esplanade, said the boy was distraught, naked and wet when he knocked on the door in the early hours yesterday.
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“He just started screaming, ran straight inside and sat on the couch, so we gave him a towel,” Mr Curnow said. “It looked like he had come straight out of the ocean. We called police and then his mum came and they went in an ambulance. They were crying — it was pretty full-on.”
Earlier yesterday, poor visibility at the beach, 12km southwest of Adelaide’s CBD, had hampered efforts in the search on the water while emergency service workers scoured nearby sand dunes and scrub. A number of Mr Ghimire’s friends gathered at the beach yesterday in the hope that he would be found alive.
The boy, of Indian descent, is disabled and unable to talk.
Mr Ghimire, who moved to Adelaide from Nepal in 2016, had recently completed a diploma of nursing. He had no immediate family in Australia, although it is understood his brother was to arrive tomorrow.
Friend Pradib Khatri said yesterday he could not understand why Mr Ghimire, a regular visitor to the beach, would have gone in the water. “My only guess is that the kid was in trouble and he went to save him or something,” he said.
“It’s a mystery to us.”
Mr Ghimire’s cousin Devi Shrestha said she felt “desperate”.
Police said there was no sign of foul play. “Maybe he’s been disorientated or something — we don’t know at this point,” Inspector Sandy Morey said.
“We’ve been unable to get any information from the boy as to what actually happened.”
Police said there were no suspicious circumstances surrounding his death and a report was being prepared for the coroner.
Thirty-two people have drowned in Australia’s waterways in the past 28 days. Included among these was a 27-year-old New Zealander, whose body was recovered on Thursday after he fell into a rock pool at MacKenzie Falls in the Grampians National Park in Victoria.
On Christmas Day, a 64-year-old man drowned at Cape Schanck on Victoria’s Mornington Peninsula and a 46-year-old South Korean man drowned while snorkelling at Lake Conjola on the NSW south coast.
On Christmas Eve, an Indian-Australian father and his two sons were swept under by a large wave as they stood in shallows at a dangerous Phillip Island beach.
