Child who died with Polish mother when they plunged from ferry ‘was in a wheelchair’, say witnesses

A seven-year-old Polish boy who died with his mother after jumping from a passenger ferry into the Baltic Sea may have been disabled and confined to a wheelchair, shocked witnesses say.

It comes as Polish authorities have announced they are investigating the tragedy as the “murder of a child and the mother’s suicide,” amid claims the ship’s railing was too high to prevent an accidental fall. to make possible.

Initial reports suggested the boy had fallen and his mother jumped in to save him, but CCTV footage would not match this version of events and a murder investigation has also been launched by Swedish prosecutors, with no suspect identified .

Passengers on the Stena Spirit ferry, which carried 310 people from Sweden to Poland on Thursday, watched in horror as rescue teams scoured the ocean for an hour to find the boy and his mother.

The mother, who has been named Paulina, is said to be from Grudziadz, a town south of Gdansk, and was a single parent to her son Lech, according to Polish newspaper Fakt.

The pair were found in the icy water, hoisted up by a helicopter and rushed to hospital, where they both died.

Now an expert has told Polish media that the high railings on the ferry meant the boy’s fall from about 20 meters “cannot have been an accident”.

Agnieszka Zembrzycka, a Stena Line spokesperson, told Polish media on Friday that the ship’s CCTV footage did not match this version of events.

“The barriers are at my chest level and I am 180 cm tall, so it cannot have been an accidental fall,” said Polish rescue expert Michal Mieczkowski.

“Or the child was climbing and the jerking or rocking of the ship made him lose his balance, or is this a suicide attempt?”

The ferry, which is owned by Stena Line, was on its way from Gdynia in Poland to Karlskrona in Sweden on Thursday when the tragedy occurred.

The mother was found in the icy water 59 minutes after the alarm went off and her son seven minutes later, according to a Stena Line official, before they were hoisted up by helicopter and rushed to Karlskrona Hospital.

According to initial media reports, the boy had fallen into the sea and his mother had jumped after him.

Polish media quoted eyewitnesses from the ferry as saying the child was “disabled in some way” and used a buggy or wheelchair.

Pre-incident video, which has been reviewed by local media, suggests that the mother and her son had been hugging before the incident took place.

A witness also claimed online that the 36-year-old mother looked “tired and depressed” when they saw her.

Meanwhile, a Polish diving group sailing in the area claimed to have recovered a Stena Spirit lifebuoy from the sea over the weekend.

There is no confirmation whether this was related to the rescue.

Swedish prosecutors said on Friday they had opened a preliminary investigation into the murder charge, adding that no suspect had yet been identified.

“The investigation is designed to try to clarify what happened,” prosecutor Stina Brindmark said.

The prosecutor did not want to answer whether the investigation concerns the mother, whose death was confirmed on Friday.

Police spokesman Mariusz Ciarka confirmed on Friday: “Unfortunately, we received a message from the Swedish side in the morning that we have to pass on this terrible news to the family, because both the boy and the woman are dead.”

The Swedish ferry was halfway through its journey from Karlskrona in Sweden to Gdynia in Poland when the tragedy occurred, officials said.

The ferry’s lifeboat, a Swedish Maritime Administration helicopter, German helicopters and a US aircraft from a nearby NATO exercise all took part in the rescue, local media reported.

The exact circumstances surrounding the horrific incident remain unknown.

“There were passengers who alerted the crew that two people were missing. Subsequently, possessions were found without the people. Subsequently, the crew was alerted and the surveillance images were checked,’ Stefan Elfström, head of information at Stena Line, told local media.

According to initial media reports, a boy had fallen into the sea and a woman had jumped after him.

However, Agnieszka Zembrzycka, a spokesman for Stena Line, told Polish media on Friday that the ship’s CCTV footage did not match this version of events.

She declined to provide further details pending the outcome of the investigation into what happened.

“At the moment we have no information whether this was due to a malfunction of the ferry,” Stena Line spokesman Agnieszka Zembrzycka told TVN 24.

“We are cooperating with the police and other authorities appointed to explain the causes and circumstances of this event.”

The Swedish police, through the Polish state news agency PAP, called on Polish passengers to request information that could explain how the accident happened.

Swedish Maritime Administration spokesman Jonas Franzen told reporters that the child fell from a height of about 20 meters (65 feet).

“First we received a report that one person had fallen overboard, then it turned out to be two,” says Lars Blom, head of rescue operations at the rescue center of the Swedish Maritime Administration.

Sebastian Kluska, a director of the Polish Maritime Search and Rescue Service, said the ferry departed Gdynia at 9am on Thursday and headed for Karlskrona in southern Sweden.

At about 4:20 p.m., information came in about two people who had fallen off the ferry and emergency services rushed to the scene.

The accident occurred in the Swedish SAR service’s area of ​​responsibility, but his Polish team was called in to help, he said.

About five minutes after the broadcast of the message, which was also broadcast by the Polish Rescue Radio, the Swedish government and the Swedish Rescue Coordination Center asked for help, he said. Fact.pl.

It was the lifeboat crew that found the Polish woman and her son in the water, he added, claiming they were then handed over to rescue helicopters.