Bodies of mother and son, 5, found at cliffs
The lifeboat crew discovered the child’s body first beneath the cliffs, then the mother’s shortly after.
Formal identification has not taken place yet and Sussex Police declined to say if the mother and son had been reported missing.
A spokesman for the RNLI said: “The Eastbourne lifeboat was launched at 6am this morning to Beachy Head and recovered a casualty from the beach.
“The casualty was then passed to the police coroner.”
Yesterday, tourists and sightseers mingled with police, who were continuing their investigation in the misty morning rain.
The latest tragedy comes after three bodies – believed to be two men and a woman – were also found at the bottom of the cliffs last week.
Emergency services were alerted last Wednesday afternoon. With the help of the Eastbourne RNLI inshore lifeboat, they recovered the body of a 58-year-old man from London. While the recovery was in progress, a second, badly decomposed body, believed to be that of a woman, was found nearby.
Then some 40 minutes later a third body, believed to be that of another man from London, was discovered some distance away.
Sussex Police said three deaths are not that last week’s being treated as Police above Beachy Head cliffs, right, yesterday suspicious and they are not connected. The cliff is the highest chalk sea cliff in Britain, rising to 530ft above sea level. Its prominence has also made it a landmark for sailors in the English Channel.
The iconic tourist landmark is visited by an estimated 350,000 people each year.
Police figures reveal that about 30 people take their own lives each year at the cliffs, near the Seven Sisters and the Birling Gap.