Authorities announced on Friday that a seven-year-old Polish child and his mother had perished after falling from a boat that was heading from Sweden to Poland.
Although no suspects have been named, Swedish authorities declared that the case is being investigated as a homicide to find out what happened.
According to prosecutor Stina Brindmark, “the investigation aims to try to clarify what happened.”
According to authorities, the child fell from the Stena Spirit ferry on Thursday, and his mother apparently tried to save him by diving into the water after him. According to the Swedish Maritime Administration, the kid fell from a height of roughly 65 feet.
As a helicopter was dispatched to locate and save the missing couple, ferry passengers watched in terror. The two were winched to the helicopter and flown to a hospital in Sweden, but they eventually passed away.
According to the Polish website Fakt, the woman was in the water for 59 minutes and her son for 66 minutes before the aircraft could rescue them both.
The mother and her son’s deaths were confirmed by Polish police after they were declared dead.
Unfortunately, we learned from the Swedish side early this morning that we must inform the family that both the boy and the woman had passed away, according to Polish police spokesman Mariusz Ciarka.
According to rescue officials, the Swedish ferry, the Stena Spirit, had 310 passengers on board and was midway through a trip from Karlskrona, Sweden, to Gdynia, Poland, when the disaster occurred.
According to Reuters, Stena Line spokeswoman Agnieszka Zembrzycka told TVN 24, “At this time we have no information whether this was due to a malfunction of the ferry.” “We are assisting the police and other appointed authorities in their investigation into the circumstances and causes of this incident.”
According to Stefan Elfstrom, a spokesman for Stena Line, when the man overboard alert was activated, the crew reacted quickly.
Items that belonged to these people have been discovered, but not the people themselves, according to Elfstrom. The staff looked at the security cameras after the alarm went off and noticed that two persons had fallen into the water.
“There isn’t much information available on whether the two passengers on the ship had family or friends with them. But somebody discovered that there were two people missing.
Polish passengers have been questioned by Swedish authorities for information that could shed light on how the tragedy occurred via Poland’s state-run news agency PAP.
