(Image: Sam Cooke/North Yorkshire Weather Updates)
A major search is underway to find a 13-year-old boy who got into difficulty while swimming in the sea off Yorkshire.
The coastguard, ambulance service and fire service have been deployed to the South Promenade area of Hornsea after concerns were raised about the boy’s safety at 6pm on Tuesday (August 4).
Chief Superintendent Phil Booker, from Humberside Police, urged people to avoid the area and to “refrain from speculating on the circumstances of the incident”.
“After receiving the report, officers were immediately deployed alongside other emergency services and upon attending, it was discovered that a 13-year-old boy had reportedly got into difficulty whilst swimming in the water,” he said.
“Our priority now is to find the boy, and members of the public can expect to see specialist Police Search Advisors (POLSA), along with our Marine Unit and drone pilots, who have also been deployed to conduct an extensive search and rescue operation to locate him.
“We would urge people to please avoid the area where possible to allow emergency services to work efficiently and safely, and refrain from speculating on the circumstances of the incident.
“Our enquiries continue to ascertain the full circumstances around the report, and we would ask anyone with any information that may assist us, to please speak to the officers in Hornsea, or contact us via our non-emergency number 101 quoting log 415 of 4 August.”
Footage and photographs taken at the scene show a lifeboat on the sea, and an HM Coastguard helicopter circling above.
Tuesday’s incident in East Yorkshire happened less than 20 miles away from where 15-year-old Grace Keeling was swept out to sea in January.
Grace died in the sea at Withernsea, along with her mother, Sarah Keeling, 45, and local man Mark Ratcliffe, 67, who went into the water to help her on the afternoon of January 2 and immediately got into difficulties themselves, an inquest heard in May.
The search for Grace’s body took 13 days and it was eventually found trapped among giant boulders used for sea defences to the south of where the incident happened.
According to Press Association estimates, at least 39 deaths have been reported this summer from open-water incidents.
The National Water Safety Forum reported there were 202 water-related fatalities across the whole of last year in the UK, adding that 2026 data will not be published until May next year.