A 7-year-old Polish boy died after falling from a ferry on which he was traveling from Sweden to Poland, as well as his mother who was trying to save him, authorities said Friday.
According to Swedish prosecutors, the case is being investigated as a homicide, but they are working to find out what really happened. The suspects have not yet been identified.
“The objective of the investigation is to try to clarify what happened,” said prosecutor Stina Brindmark.
Authorities initially said Thursday that the boy fell from the Stena Spirit ferry, and his mother dove after him to try to rescue him. The boy fell from a height of about 65 feet, according to the Swedish Maritime Administration.
Passengers aboard the ferry described what it was like to see a helicopter deploy to try to rescue the boy and his mother. Both were put on a helicopter and transported to a hospital, but later died.
According to reports, the mother was in the water for 59 minutes before the helicopter managed to rescue her, while her son was there for more than an hour. The death of the two victims was confirmed after the mother and child could not be resuscitated, according to the Polish website Fakt.
“Unfortunately, in the morning we received information from the Swedish side that we have to convey this terrible news to the family, because both the child and the woman are dead,” Polish police spokesman Mariusz Ciarka said.
The Swedish-origin ferry had 310 people on board, and was in the Baltic Sea halfway through its journey to Gdyna, Poland, departing from Karlskrona, Sweden, according to officials.
“At the moment we have no information on whether this was due to a malfunction of the ferry,” Stena Line spokeswoman Agnieszka Zembrzycka told TVN 24, Reuters reported. “We are cooperating with the police and other designated authorities to explain the causes and circumstances of this event.”
For his part, Stenia Line spokesman Stefan Elfstrom told the Independent that the crew responded quickly when the man overboard alarm was activated.
“Items have been found that belong to these people, but not to the people themselves,” Elfstrom said. “Then the alarm went off, the crew looked at the surveillance cameras and saw that two people had fallen into the water.”
At the moment, there is not enough information about whether there were relatives or people who knew the two victims on the ferry. However, someone noticed that two people were missing.
Swedish police, for their part, asked the Polish passengers for information that could help explain how the accident occurred is from Poland’s state news agency, PAP.
With information from the New York Post
Keep reading:
• Fatal boat accident in Miami, Florida, leaves one dead and one injured
• Hispanic boy and woman drowned when their boat capsized in the Hudson River in New York
• Two Miami millionaires drowned when their vehicle fell into the sea from a ferry bound for a private island