At Abingdon Lock boats were not being allowed through from Oxford as there was a police incident at Culham Reach.
So boats were allowed to go to Oxford but would not be allowed back again until the restriction was lifted. Both river and footpath were closed just beyond Abingdon Marina while the police, fire, and environment agency searched the river.
It meant there were very few boats coming through Abingdon today.
Such a tragedy, such a waste. !
Volunteer divers who found the body of a 16-year-old boy who went missing after cooling off in the Thames have labelled police ‘disgusting’ for saying the team could not go into the water.His family strongly criticised police delays in sending in divers and the boy’s mother Emma thanked volunteers today, saying: ‘If it wasn’t for you our little boy would still be in that river now.’The discovery came as volunteer divers from Surrey-based Specialist Group International sensationally claimed today that police refused to let their high-security cleared team into water.The divers also alleged that the distraught Downes family helped carry their equipment into the water while 15 officers stood by – and that top brass refused to speak to the team. SGI’s chief executive Peter Faulding, who led the recovery effort, told how his team flouted top-level police instructions barring them from entering the water and recovered Ellis’s body within an hour. He said: ‘This is the most disgusting police response I’ve ever seen in 20 years of policing and forensic searches. I’ve never been so humiliated in my life.’
The news-report Janet is quoting from is at http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-3582654/Volunteer-divers-body-16-year-old-jumped-River-Thames-cool-police-failed-send-search-team.html
Thames Valley Police disbanded its own specialist underwater search team as a measure of Police cuts. As people are lost in the Thames every year I think this was a false economy. I have emailed the newly appointed Police Commissioner for his comment but other people who have tried to contact him have not received a reply.