CONWAY — A year ago this week, Chicopee resident Abdelaziz Ayay, 21, drowned in the Conway Community Swimming Pool, but without the help of Leah Gump, a 20-year-old Conway native, Police Chief Donald Bates believes two lives would have been lost that day.
“Who else is going to do what she did last year?” Bates said at Conway Town Hall recently, where he gave Gump a “Lifesaving Award” from Gov. Maura Healey.
At June’s Annual Town Meeting, Bates took a moment to recognize Gump, a rising junior at Middlebury College in Vermont, with the award, which reads, “in recognition of extraordinary courage and selfless action, your bravery and quick response saved a life from drowning.”
With Gump away in Wyoming earning her emergency medical technician (EMT) certification at the time, her father accepted the award on her behalf. The audience applauded and gave a standing ovation.
“I wanted to do it in a public setting, because I thought what she did was so great that I think more people in town should know about it,” Bates said in July.
One year ago
On July 22, 2025, after working a shift as a lifeguard at Tri-Town Beach, Gump decided to train for an upcoming triathlon by practicing her swimming at the Community Swimming Pool on Whately Road, just a walk away from the house she grew up in. The facility is owned and operated by the volunteer-run nonprofit Conway Community Swimming Pool Inc., and it is reserved for Conway residents and their guests.
“I was head down, swimming — head cap, goggles on — and then, as I was going to get out of the water, this mom with her kid ran down and said that two people were drowning,” Gump recalled in an interview. “Unfortunately, when I turned around to look, there was only one person with their head above water.”
She immediately took action, remembering the practice scenarios from her lifeguard training. She told the woman bobbing at the water’s surface to float on her back, keep her arms and legs moving, and take deep breaths, all while “reminding her that she was going to be OK.”
“In that moment, I was in the mode of trying my very best to help her,” Gump said. “I remember just having this moment of, ‘OK, I only see one swimmer. I’m going to prioritize making sure that she’s going to be OK.'”
“The training kicked in, didn’t it?” Bates chimed.
She then swam over to the woman and helped her out of the water as fire trucks and ambulances arrived.
When Bates first stepped onto the scene, the then-19-year-old’s composure struck him. Both Bates and Fire Chief Christopher Herrmann said they look for first responders who do not flinch in times of crisis.
“It’s easy to call 911 and not do anything,” Herrmann added. “She chose to do something to help save a life.”
“You don’t want somebody to panic, because if they panic, they’re not doing anything,” Bates said. “From what I saw, from what I was told, she had zero panic, which was quite phenomenal, especially from somebody her age.”
As first responders tended to the woman, Gump jumped back into the water and located Ayay’s body. She handed a firefighter her goggles before they pulled Ayay out of the pool.
Bates stressed that Gump stayed calm. She continued helping the first responders and remained close by for almost an hour.
According to Northwestern District Attorney’s Office spokesperson Melissa Sippel, the investigation into Ayay’s death has concluded, and it was determined that the incident was an accidental drowning. No evidence of foul play was identified, she said.
At the time, the Trustees of the Conway Community Swimming Pool said it was the first time anyone had drowned at the facility since it opened in 1950.
The gravity of the moment and the fear did not hit Gump until she left the Community Swimming Pool and her mind switched off autopilot.
“Because I had trained for situations like that, it was easy to do what I thought was best,” Gump said. “You come from work as a lifeguard, where it’s like, ‘OK, this is my job,’ and then the saves happen when you least expect them.”
Gump recently met with the woman she helped save. Through the conversation, the pair processed the intense memory and Gump helped fill in the gaps and details.
“It was nice to close that loop,” Gump said. “I was happy to be able to meet her and talk with her. I also felt really sad for her, because I know that she had lost her friend in that situation. … While this was an intense event for me, this was one of the worst days of her life.”
‘This is my calling’
After earning her EMT certification in June, Gump is now training alongside the first responders whom she helped last July. While the 20-year-old brings skills from her EMT training, like patient assessment steps, she said she has learned on-the-job lessons that only come from riding in the ambulance, like how to load a patient onto a stretcher and communicate with nearby hospitals.
For Gump, the field of medicine has always been in the back of her mind. When her mother returned home from her job as a family care physician at Valley Medical Group, she often shared stories from her days of “meeting the most interesting people,” she recalled.
“Despite the fact that the medical field can be something with so much burnout, she’s just continuously fulfilled by her patients and what she does,” Gump said.
Growing up, Gump said she resisted at first, thinking, “If something else calls to me, I’ll do that.”
“But as I continued down the path, I was like, ‘No, this is it. This is my calling,'” she said.
By last July, Gump was considering becoming an EMT. Watching the first responders step in, she felt inspired, but her instincts at the Community Swimming Pool also taught her something new about herself.
“Being in that moment and knowing that I was able to at least do something to make it better for somebody else was very reaffirming,” she said, “that I could take action in hard moments as well as the easy mundane day-to-day.”
