A seven-year-old Polish boy and his mother passed away on Friday after falling off a ferry that was travelling from Sweden to Poland, according to authorities. Swedish prosecutors have launched an inquiry to establish what happened, yet no perpetrator has been identified.
Stina Brandmark, a prosecutor, stated: “The investigation aims to try to clarify what happened.” It is believed that the child had a drop of approximately 65 feet, per the Swedish Maritime Administration. Passengers on the Stena Spirit ferry were horrified when a helicopter was used to locate the missing mother and son. After being lifted by the helicopter, they were taken to a Swedish hospital, however, both could not be saved.
The mother was in the water for 59 minutes, and the boy for 66 minutes, as reported by Polish website Fakt. Polish police later confirmed the deaths of the mother and son after unsuccessful attempts to resuscitate them. Mariusz Ciarka, a Polish police spokesman, said: “Unfortunately, in the morning we received information from the Swedish side that we have to pass on this terrible news to the family, because both the boy and the woman are dead.”
The Stena Spirit ferry, with 310 passengers on board, was in the Baltic Sea en route from Karlskrona in Sweden to Gdynia in Poland when the incident occurred, according to rescue officials. Agnieszka Zembrzycka, a Stena Line spokesperson, told TVN 24: “At the moment we have no information whether this was due to a malfunction of the ferry. We are cooperating with the police and other authorities that are appointed to explain the causes and circumstances of this event.” Stefan Elfstrom, a spokesman for Stena Line, told the Independent that the crew acted quickly when the man overboard alarm was raised. He stated: “Items have been found that belong to these people, but not the people themselves. Then the alarm went off, the crew looked at the surveillance cameras and saw that two people had fallen into the water.”