Parents held as boy drowns in water park
A COUPLE were arrested yesterday after their five-year-old boy drowned at a water park.
Charlie Dunn was on a day out with his family when he is said to have wandered off into a lagoon on Saturday.
He was reportedly pulled from the water by an 11-year-old boy who felt Charlie’s hair while searching for his own goggles. Charlie died in hospital shortly afterwards.
His stepfather Paul Smith is said to have realised immediately that it was Charlie being pulled out of the lagoon when he recognised his shorts, which were patterned with the cartoon characters Minions.
Last night Charlie’s stepgrandmother Sharon Robinson confirmed that her son Mr Smith, 35, and Charlie’s mother Lynsey Dunn, 28, had been arrested. It was unclear why they are being held.
Mrs Robinson, 50, said the incident was ‘every parent’s worst nightmare’ and that being arrested was ‘the last thing they needed’. She said Charlie, who was nicknamed the Milky Bar Kid because of his blond hair and glasses, was ‘a loving boy’. She added: ‘Charlie was a typical five-year-old. He was funny, cheeky and lovable.
‘Paul called me and said, “he’s gone blue, he’s blue”. He’s beating himself up about it. [They] will have to live with the guilt, which is awful.’
Mr Smith and Miss Dunn, of Tamworth, Staffordshire, had spent the day with Charlie, his sister Rebecca, eight, and their one-year-old daughter at Bosworth Water Park near Nuneaton, Warwickshire, which has 20 acres of lakes and lagoons for boating and swimming.
Mr Smith, who is unemployed, was loading the car to go home just before 4pm because Miss Dunn, who is three months pregnant, felt unwell, when Charlie went back to the water.
After being pulled from an area know as the Blue Lagoon, which has signs warning parents to supervise their children, Charlie was airlifted to hospital where he was put on life support. His parents decided to switch off his life support when they were told he could not be saved.
Officers from Leicestershire Police spent yesterday searching the couple’s terraced home.
A spokesman for the force asked people not to speculate over the circumstances of Charlie’s death.