The 17-year-old was swimming with a friend in rough seas at a beach near the town of Chania on the Greek resort island of Crete when the disaster struck.
A British teenager has died while on holiday on a Greek island after getting into trouble in the water.
The 17-year-old was swimming in the sea on the tourist island of Crete when the disaster struck.
The teenager had been going into the water with a friend at the beach despite red flags showing it was dangerous to swim.
The couple was in the water when they suddenly started screaming for help. Six lifeguards ran to help and managed to pull one of the children to safety from the turbulent waters.
Tragically, the second child drowned before rescuers could reach him. The tragic incident occurred near the town of Chania, on the northwest coast of the Greek island.
Emergency crews were unable to find the second child for a while. Teams used a drone to try to locate the young Briton, but he was nowhere to be found.
The Greek Coast Guard intervened with two ships and a sea vessel asking if they had seen it, but to no avail.
After an agonizing search, the teenager’s lifeless body was discovered near the mouth of the Kladisos River, a short distance from where he had disappeared. The rescuers tried to resuscitate him but it was too late.
“Despite the red flags, they decided to dive, defying the danger,” a local witness told Greek media.
The local reported hearing children screaming for help before locals and lifeguards rushed into the choppy waters to try to rescue them.
The witness said: “They managed to get one of them out relatively quickly. The second one disappeared.
“In the end, the sea swept him about 100 meters away. He probably got stuck at the bottom.”
The boy was taken by ambulance to a nearby hospital but doctors could not save him.
It comes as a devastated father tells how his teenage daughter’s birthday celebrations turned into a “death day” after the star pupil drowned in a “terrible accident”.
Thirteen-year-old Palwasha Akbar was playing at River Wharfe in Burnsall, North Yorkshire, when she got into difficulty on 31 May.
She was rescued but later died in the hospital. She was one of 19 victims of water-related deaths during a “catastrophic” week-long heat wave in May.
