THE MAN who acts as the town's Gryphon mascot has broken his back in a freak sea accident while on honeymoon in St Lucia.
Daniel Wilkinson was on an inflatable ‘donut’ ride being towed by a speed boat when the rubber ring he was sitting on smashed against a wave breaker of large boulders.
The 25-year-old, from Station Road, Lundwood was catapulted into the air and landed on the jagged rocks.
His wife of just three days, Emma Kwapisz, was sitting at the nearby pool when her sister-in-law ran to tell her what had happened.
She said: “As I got to the end of the pier I thought I was going to find my husband smashed to death, my legs were buckling. I still can’t get that image out of my head.”
Daniel, who has a cosmetics stall on Barnsley market, was taken to St Lucia Tapion private hospital, which Emma describes as being like a ‘shanty town’ with ants crawling over the floors and little privacy.
