Loiret: a six-year-old child drowned in a nautical base, his mother hospitalized

Drowning deaths have tended to increase in recent years and a first tragedy has occurred in Loiret.

A six-year-old child died Wednesday evening after drowning in a nautical base in Saint-Jean-le-Blanc, a police source said.

The Orléans public prosecutor's office announced that it had opened an investigation "in search of the causes of death, in order to establish the circumstances of the death".

Police say it was the mother who reported the boy's disappearance to lifeguards in the late afternoon.

The child, found twenty minutes later, was taken out of the water thanks to a human chain, before being taken care of by supervisors and firefighters.

The mother also hospitalized

Transported to the Orléans Regional Hospital Center in a state of absolute emergency, the child was declared dead in the early evening. According to France Bleu, the alert was given on Wednesday around 5 p.m. by the lifeguards. They are the ones who then took the child out of the water, before giving him first aid while waiting for help. The investigation will have to determine in particular whether the child was swimming in the supervised part of the nautical base, located on an island in the Loire, at the time of his disappearance. The child's mother was also hospitalized in a state of relative emergency.

In recent years, the number of children who have drowned has grown steadily in France. A grim record which should invite parents to be extremely vigilant, by bringing their children to supervised areas, where swimming is authorized. Faced with this problem, the government launched in 2019 the “Aquatic ease” plan, to allow children to anticipate learning to swim from kindergarten.