Footage of a group of people sliding and skating on a frozen lake just days after four boys died after falling into freezing water has sparked concerns as emergency services across the country urged people to stay off iced-over water.
The worrying footage shows a group of people messing around on a frozen lake at Sefton Park, Liverpool, on 14 December – three days after brothers Finlay and Samuel Butler, eight and six, their cousin Thomas Steward, 11, and 10-year-old Jack Johnson all plunged into water in Solihull, West Midlands, leading to their deaths.
The tragedy prompted emergency services to warn people about the dangers of walking on frozen lakes and ponds, but the group in Liverpool seemed unconcerned – reportedly telling people warning them that they were ‘old enough to make our own decisions’.
Footage taken by onlooker Nick Robinson, 49, shows the group taking selfies, kicking a football and skating on the frozen lake.
He said: “All I could think is there’s no way these people have not seen the story about those little boys in Solihull and I was astounded.
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“One woman went on the ice, and then like lemons, the rest of them followed until there were ten of them on the ice.
“A woman who was jogging past shouted at them to get off the ice, but they didn’t listen.”
He added: “They were on the ice for between 15 and 20 minutes and then two wardens came and shouted at them to get off the ice.
“They all started shouting abuse and one of the women, who was in her late 20s to early 30s screamed ‘who do you think you’re talking to, we’re old enough to make our own decisions’.
“The wardens gave them a telling off and then they eventually came off the ice but the abuse continued.
“At one point they were getting really close to the darker section of the ice, where it’s thinner.”
Similar incidents across the country have sparked warnings from police forces, including in St Albans, Hertfordshire, where people were filmed doing press ups on a frozen pond, and Lincolnshire, where police said two young boys had walked across a canal in Grantham and three boys had gone on to a frozen lake in Horncastle.
Police in Cambridgeshire, Telford and Suffolk also reported similar incidents.