The 11-year-old girl disappeared in the River Thames – we’ll be bringing you the very latest updates, pictures and video on this breaking news story.
An 11-year-old girl who disappeared after paddling in the River Thames yesterday has been named.
Kaliyah, aged 11, was last seen in the water with a friend near Woolwich, South East London, on Monday afternoon. Police said officers were called to reports that the girl had entered the river close to London City Airport, at about 1.15pm on Monday.
Emergency services initially launched a “large-scale response” to the incident involving London Ambulance Service, London Fire Brigade and the RNLI, but the search was later scaled down and handed over to the police. The child had been playing near the water with a young boy and girl, residents said.
Shaleen Rajaendram, 59, who lives on Barge House Road which leads onto the causeway, said: “I heard upstairs a guy was screaming ‘wait there, wait, the police is coming’.” The man was standing on a balcony in a flat block overlooking the river and later told Ms Rajaendram he had been alerted by the children “shouting, screaming”, she said.
Ms Rajaendram continued: “Then I saw suddenly two kids were coming out to the top of the bridge, I said ‘what happened?’
“Then they said ‘one of my friends was playing in the water, one of my friends has gone into water and she’s gone underneath and we can’t find her’.” A relative of Kaliyah told the Sun that Kaliyah had only turned 11 last week and described her as a “beautiful bubbly girl”
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