Mother and son die in Swiss lake

A British woman and her four-year-old son have drowned on holiday at a Swiss lake.

The 40-year-old woman and the boy had been swimming in the Schwarzee lake when they went missing.

Four members of the family from Buckinghamshire, including the woman's husband and another child, had taken a boat onto the lake on Monday.

Nobody knows what happened - it is such a small lake and not deep

Agbar Noury
Local resident

The woman and boy had decided to swim back to their hotel when they were 70 metres from the shore.

They jumped into the water and the husband continued with the boat to a landing stage and then went to wait for them on the shore.

When he found no-one there, he alerted authorities.

Divers found their bodies in 2.5m (8 feet) of water late on Monday, four hours after they disappeared, police in the Swiss canton of Fribourg said.

Shallow water

They were just 2m from shallow water and 20m from the shore.

The victims have not been named.

Swiss police said they had launched an investigation into the deaths.

The family hired the rowing boat for an hour from the Hotel Primerose au Lac on the shore of the lake.

Dark waters

Hotel manager Agbar Noury said: "It's terrible. Everyone here is shocked. Nobody knows what happened.

"It is such a small lake and not deep.

"No one has ever died here before."

The Schwarzsee is called Lac Noir by the locals and lies at 1046m above sea-level south west of Fribourg.

The Lonely Planet guide says it has dark waters and is set before a backdrop of high limestone peaks with "remarkable jagged summits that rise up from grassy hills".

It was the second double drowning of tourists in three days in Switzerland.

On Saturday, an American man and his 5-year-old daughter died in a pool at their holiday home in the central Swiss resort of Engelberg.