Teenagers' bodies recovered from Down lake

The bodies of two teenagers whose boat capsized in a forest park lake in Co Down were today recovered.

The victims, an 18-year-old man and a 16-year-old girl who are believed to be related, were found after a search operation lasting almost eight hours at Castlewellan Forest Park in Co Down.

The alarm was raised after 1am by another man who was on the boat, but he managed to swim to shore.

Police, coastguard and fire service personnel were dispatched to the scene near a caravan park. A police helicopter using infra red equipment was also deployed.

The bodies were recovered at around 11.30am as a crowd of people gathered at the scene of the tragedy.

The families and locals began to leave the scene at around 12.40pm.

There were tears as teenagers comforted each other. Relatives and neighbours also hugged each other as the extent of the tragedy began to hit home.

The victims were named later by police as 16-year-old Clare Steele and Rory McAlinden, aged 18. They were both from Castlewellan.

Superintendent Peter Loughins said while the third person, who managed to swim to safety, was not physically injured, he was obviously in a state of shock about what happened.

“Shortly after 11am police dogs and a civilian dog located in the water a body,” he confirmed.

“In response to that the Mourne Underwater Search Team subsequently found the bodies of Clare Steele and Rory McAlinden.”

He added: “We give our sympathy to the families involved at this time.”

Superintendent Loughins said at this stage it had not yet been established what the young people were doing in a canoe in the area at the time.

“I think we cannot reiterate enough how dangerous it is to be going in and out of water if you are not trained to deal with these sorts of things,” he said. “We would appeal to people not to do that.”

One of the bodies of the teenagers was removed from the scene by an undertakers at around 12.30pm.