As the search for a girl missing in the Thames River in London continued Friday, an eyewitness who was fishing when she disappeared recalled how he tried to save her in the fast-moving current.
The 11-year-old boy, who’d been fishing with his grandfather Thursday, said he saw the girl playing in the water upstream nearby when she began to struggle and the current pushed her downstream toward him.
The boy, whom The London Free Press is not identifying, said he grabbed a long stick and extended it out toward the girl but she was too far away to reach it.
“The water pushed her,” said the youth, who returned to the area Friday with a relative as the search continued.
The boy, who’d been fishing off a retaining wall along the river behind the 800 block of Kipps Lane, said a woman he believed to be the girl’s mother had been standing along the river upstream of him. She also tried to save the girl, he said, but had two small children with her.
After the girl disappeared in the water, the 11-year-old said, he yelled for assistance.
“I was screaming for 911 and for help,” said the boy. He said he heard the mother make a frantic call that he assumed was to 911.
Searchers were conducting a recovery mission Friday for the girl, whom authorities have not publicly identified except to say the child is a girl under age 10.
What’s known is that the girl entered the river about 300 metres east of the Adelaide Street North bridge on Thursday about 3 p.m. Firefighters and police quickly descended and began searching the river and its banks, with dive teams from Waterloo Region police and the OPP called in.
FULL STORY: https://lfpress.com/news/eyewitness-says-he-tried-to-save-london-girl-swept-away-in-thames-river
