A man has described how he rescued a boy from the River Thames – after a body was found in the search for a girl who went missing during the same incident.
George Karnovski says he pulled what he said was an “11-year-old” boy out of the river after he got into difficulty near the Royal Terrace Pier in Gravesend in Kent.
He said once he had the child on a buoy, he was “just screaming” as he struggled in the water.
Kent Police and the RNLI (Royal National Lifeboat Institution) recovered the body of the missing girl at around 11.40am on Saturday.
Witnesses suggest she was the boy’s younger sister.
Formal identification by the girl’s next of kin has taken place, and the death is not being treated as suspicious, police said.
Emergency services were called on Friday afternoon after concerns were raised for the two children who had entered the river at nearby Royal Pier Road.
Mr Karnvoski said: “At the same time as pulling him out, I was looking around, like, where is she, where is she?
“I’m shouting, saying ‘there’s one more, there’s one more’. I’m looking around, [but] for love nor money, I cannot see the little girl.”
Mr Karnovski, 37, who is a member of the RAF, had been visiting his family who live in the town.
He said they had been out on a walk when they heard that children were in trouble in the water, which he said had “a strong current”.
His brother Jack, who lives in the area, said he had seen his wife “scream, and point at the river. I assumed it was my children. I went running and shouted to my brother”.
The pair discovered there was only one life ring, and so only George, who said he had previously had lifeguard training, could enter the water for safety reasons.
Jack said that when George jumped in, he “said he never felt the bottom. We had to run down the jetty because the tide was running up”.
“The jetty is quite long. By the time you ran down it, it was deep water,” he added.
George said the conditions in the water at the time were “tough”, even for an experienced adult swimmer.
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By the time he entered the water, he says the children were about 40 to 50 metres (131 to 164 feet) away, and it took him about two minutes to get to them.
“I started swimming. I went quite hard to begin with, but then started running out of steam,” he said.
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Jack, who was on the pier directing George in his efforts to rescue the children, said the children were travelling quickly with the strength of the water.
“In terms of the current, they’d fallen off the jetty. They were about 50 metres away, going towards London. By the time my brother had caught up with them, I’d say he was 150 to 200 metres (492 to 656 feet) away. So that gives you an idea. In a couple of minutes, they’d gone 100m (328 feet) or more down the Thames,” he said.
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The brothers said other organisations helped the rescue efforts, including the RNLI and the London Port Authority (LPA).
The LPA said in a statement they “are continuing to support police with their inquiries into exactly what happened, and where and how the children entered the water. It is so sad and the thoughts of the whole of the LPA are with their loved ones”.
