Story By: Joseph Golder, Sub-Editor: Joseph Golder, Agency: Central European News
This is the eight-year-old girl who has drowned while bathing at a lake with her family after she lost her footing and slipped down a steep drop off “never to be seen again.”
The tragic incident took place at the Seepark Linzgau leisure park, which is a lake in Pfullendorf, a small town 25 kilometres (16 miles) north of Lake Constance in the southern German state of Baden-Wuerttemberg on Saturday afternoon (25th July).
Little Narin, 8, was at the lake with her whole family, her dad Abbas Musa, 40, told German newspaper Bild. He said: “We ate at home. Then we drove out to the lake with the whole family at around 4:00pm.”
The children are said to have splashed around in the water for about half an hour before the tragedy occurred.
Police say the incident took place at 5:30pm. Narin and her three siblings had been in the non-swimming area, apparently splashing along the rope that separates the area from the deep swimmer area.
Chief Inspector Oliver Weissflog is quoted in Bild as saying: “For reasons that have not yet been clarified, the child went under in the lido area.”
Narin’s father is shocked, saying: “She must have slipped and sunk on the steep water edge there… We never saw her again.”
Minutes passed before a diver discovered the child. Other bathers helped bring her ashore.
A doctor was alerted and immediately tried to reanimate the child. The police spokesman said: “Despite the support of another emergency doctor who was flown in by the rescue helicopter, all efforts were unsuccessful.”
At around 7pm, after over an hour, the doctors pronounced the child dead.
The lido is monitored by the DLRG, which is the German Life Saving Association, the largest voluntary lifesaving organisation in the world, boasting around 560,000 members.
The lake’s operations manager Joerg-Arne Bias, 49, told Bild: “Without a lifeguard, there is no swimming facility here, the lake is up to 11 metres (36 feet) deep in the bathing area. We even have rescue divers on site. It is a tragic calamity.”
Investigators from the nearby city of Ravensburg have started the investigation into the exact circumstances of the accident.
Bild report that little Narin will be buried in the Muslim cemetery in Messkirch.
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