As the summer holidays loom, a tragedy was narrowly avoided in a water park located in Belgium. In the middle of the complex, two babies were found in bad shape, while their parents bathed.
Their vacation almost turned into a nightmare. For several weeks, many holidaymakers have been taking advantage of the good weather to indulge in summer leisure, pushing up the attendance rate in leisure parks. Like that of Plopsaqua, located in Hannut-Landen, in the east of Belgium. Renowned for its water games and swimming pools, the park was unfortunately the site, on Sunday August 14, 2022, of a difficult discovery for the rescuers: that of two babies, found unattended in the middle of bags placed on the ground, and visibly in bad shape. It was while one of the rescuers was doing a lookout that he saw “movements on a pile of bags placed on an outdoor location”said Steve van den Kerkhof to The Free.
If he first thought that an animal was searching the personal effects of visitors, the rescuer quickly realized that it was two babies, one of which one would be six months oldwhile the other would be a year and a half. “Obviously abandoned” according to witnesses, “the children could not communicate and did not seem to be in great shape”specified the director general, while the daily Het Laatste Nieuws reports that they “didn’t look healthy“ and were “barely conscious“ when they were discovered. An ambulance was then called to the scene to pick up the two young children, before transporting them to hospital for full examinations.
The parents were bathing
The parents were found by the staff of the leisure park after a search of about twenty minutes. It was in a swimming pool that they were located, while they were bathing. “They were furious that an ambulance had been called, but given the children’s state of health, it was the only thing to do”, explained Gino Debroux, the mayor of Landen. According to information reported by The Free, they would have been arrested by the police before being placed under the scope of an arrest warrant. After this terrible incident, the Liège public prosecutor’s office opened an investigation. The children were hospitalized.