A GRIEF-STRICKEN dad whose son drowned in a river pleaded with other parents to keep their kids safe.
Karl Wilson was speaking after he watched police divers recover his sixteen-year-old son Tyler’s body.
Tyler had gone swimming in the Calder in Castleford, West Yorks, and underestimated the strength of the current.
Karl said: “Everybody thinks they’re good swimmers. If you’ve got kids and you’re worried about them, give them a few quid to go down the swimming baths.”
In a heartbreaking video he said the water appeared to be still but insisted the current was raging beneath.
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He went on: “If you’ve got kids and you’re worried about them…be hard on them.
“That’s what I would have done in a heartbeat if he’d spoken to me and told me. Tyler’s gone, he’s never coming back, 16 years old.
“Supposed to be doing his GCSEs, got a girlfriend, madly in love. We were losing him anyway so he could blossom, but not to life.”
Tyler was one of six people to die in open swimming accidents in just four days last week.
Two lads, 18 and 19, drowned in a nature reserve in East Yorks.
A 15-year-old died in the River Eden in Carlisle, and two men in their 20s died after swimming from a beach in Devon.