Emergency teams rush to frozen lake after youths seen playing on it
Emergency response teams rush to frozen lake after three youths were seen playing on it and one was ‘jumping up and down to see if it would crack’
- Three youths were spotted on a frozen lake in Trittiford Mill Park in Birmingham
- A full-scale emergency response was launched with vehicles rushing to scene
- One witness said: ‘I don’t know what must be going through their minds’
- Friends of Trittiford Park voiced frustration of the location of the lifebuoys
- Four boys recently lost their lives after falling into Babbs Mill Lake in Kingshurst
A full-scale emergency response was launched today after three youths were seen on a frozen lake, with one ‘jumping up and down to see if it would crack’ in a city park.
Three police vehicles were parked outside of the main Priory Road entrance to Trittiford Mill Park in Yardley Wood in Birmingham and there were five more emergency response teams nearby.
The emergency team’s response came after three people had been seen on the ice on both sides of the frozen lake.
One witness at Trittiford Mill Park lake told BirminghamLive: ‘I saw some youths venturing out into the lake without regard for the fact that four young boys in Kingshurst have just lost their lives.
One witness at Trittiford Mill Park lake said: ‘I saw some youths venturing out into the lake without regard for the fact that four young boys in Kingshurst have just lost their lives’
The witness said: ‘I even saw one jumping up and down to see if it would crack.. I don’t know what must be going through their minds’
The emergency team’s response came after three people had been seen on the ice on both sides of the frozen lake
‘I even saw one jumping up and down to see if it would crack.. I don’t know what must be going through their minds.’
The response team included two fire appliances, a technical rescue truck, a responder vehicle and an unmarked white car with blue flashing lights on Highfield Road above the River Cole.
On the frozen surface of the lake itself, more than half a dozen lifebuoys could be seen scattered around.
Many were nowhere near the posts which house them and they had not been thrown on the ice in a bid to rescue anybody.
The incident was almost a week after emergency teams had the heart-breaking task of trying to save the lives of four young boys who had fallen into Babbs Mill Lake in Kingshurst just before 3pm on Sunday, December 11.
A Birmingham City Council worker in the park said: ‘We told the people to get off the ice.
‘They don’t seem to realise that it can be so dangerous. One of them just to said to me that they could swim.’
Members of Friends of Trittiford Park who were in the park mounting a regular clean-up operation voiced their frustration at the location of the lifebuoys.
One said: ‘It happens regularly that the buoys are taken out and thrown into the lake and we keep reporting that.
Three police vehicles were parked outside of the main Priory Road entrance to Trittiford Mill Park in Yardley Wood in Birmingham and there were five more emergency response teams nearby
The response team included two fire appliances, a technical rescue truck, a responder vehicle and an unmarked white car with blue flashing lights on Highfield Road above the River Cole
Members of Friends of Trittiford Park who were in the park mounting a regular clean-up operation voiced their frustration at the location of the lifebuoys
‘The cases have to be open so that you can use them if someone gets into difficulty, but people take them out and throw them.
‘We have had regular patrols of the park in the past few days and the police have been down here, too because of this kind of anti-social behaviour.’
A police team arrived to inspect part of the lake where there were slide marks on the ice.
An officer told BirminghamLive: ‘The ice might seem solid, but you can see the areas where it’s starting to melt already despite the freezing temperatures.’
The fire teams said they had been responding to calls about young people in the area.
BirminghamLive has asked both West Midlands Fire Service and West Midlands Police for comment, with WMFS referring our inquiries solely to the police.
In a statement, West Midlands Police said: ‘We were called to Trittiford Mill Park, in Priory Road, Yardley Wood, shortly after 11am today to reports boys were playing on ice on the lake.
‘The boys had left the lake when we arrived but we identified them and offered them safety advice about the dangers of playing on ice.’
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