Two young people who died in the sea off a crowded Bournemouth beach last week drowned after a “suggestion” they got caught in a riptide, an inquest opening in the town has heard.
Joe Abbess, who was 17 years old and from Southampton, and Sunnah Khan, who was 12 and from High Wycombe, both died on 31 May.
Police are investigating the circumstances of their deaths. They arrested a man in his 40s who was on the water at the time on suspicion of manslaughter. He has since been released under investigation. The Dorset Belle sightseeing boat was impounded by Dorset police after the incident.
In a hearing to open the inquest proceedings at Bournemouth town hall in Dorset on Monday, the coroner’s officer Nicola Muller said postmortems carried out by the Home Office pathologist Basil Purdue showed the cause of their deaths was drowning.
She said Joe, a trainee chef, was pronounced dead at the Royal Bournemouth hospital, while Sunnah was taken to Poole general hospital. Joe was identified by DC Hannah Webster from a photograph provided by his family, Muller said, and Sunnah was identified by her father at the hospital.
Describing the incident, Muller told the coroner: “The brief circumstances are that emergency services were contacted by members of the public following swimmers had come into difficulty in the water, following suggestion they had been caught in a riptide.”
Rachael Griffin, the senior coroner for Dorset, said: “It’s very important people do not speculate on the circumstances surrounding Joe and Sunnah’s deaths and allow the police investigation to proceed, which will allow my investigation to proceed.”
She offered her condolences to the families. “My thoughts are very much with them at this difficult time following this tragedy. My thoughts are also with those who attended or witnessed the traumatic events.”
She said people should be “aware of the powers of the water and the risks of swimming in open water”, and should know how to respond in the event of problems and follow guidance from public agencies such as the RNLI.
Griffin adjourned the hearing until a pre-inquest review to be held on 18 September.
The Conservative MP for Bournemouth East, Tobias Ellwood, expressed concern about a lack of clarity from police about the incident. “We do need to understand, learn lessons from this, provide clarity early on, just so people can have an assurance of mind as to what roughly happened,” he told BBC Radio 4’s Today programme on Monday.
He said that if the “absence of any comprehensive statement becomes standard” in policing, misleading messages could emerge.
David Sidwick, the Conservative police and crime commissioner for Dorset, defended the police’s handling of the case, telling the Today programme that while there would be a review of their communication, the investigation’s complexity made it difficult to provide detailed up-to-date statements.
Sidwick said several agencies were working together as quickly as possible to discover exactly what happened on the day. He added: “I truly believe that they need to be given the time and space to do that fully, thoroughly, professionally and without hindrance.”
