Mother ‘swimming with her son’ dies after being pulled from sea

A woman has died after being suffering a medical emergency in the sea at a popular beach in Dorset.

The woman was pulled out of the water by members of the public on Southbourne Beach between Fisherman’s Walk and Portman Ravine.

A beach hut owner told Dorset Echo he witnessed the woman having a medical emergency in the water while with her son.

Another local ‘heard all the commotion’ as emergency services arrived to the scene.

She added: ‘They were doing CPR for ages and ages, for an awfully long time.’

A spokesperson for Dorset Police said: ‘At 2.21 pm on Monday 22 June 2026, Dorset Police was called to assist with a medical emergency at Southbourne promenade to clear an area to enable emergency services to attend safely.

‘Sadly, a short time later a woman was pronounced dead at the scene.

‘Her next of kin is aware and the coroner has been notified.

‘The death is not being treated as suspicious.’

A Dorset & Somerset Air Ambulance took off from the beach at around 4.30pm.

The death comes with a ‘heat-dome’ settling over western Europe could bring temperatures of up to 40C in some parts of England and Wales in the middle part of the week, the Met Office has said.

Temperatures for the latest heatwave are likely to overtake the June record set in Hampshire in 1976 by several degrees and could come close to the UK’s all-time high of 40.3C which was measured in July 2022.

The hot conditions, which have been very rare in the UK until now, will be accompanied by high humidity and very warm nights, which will make it hard for people to recover overnight, the forecaster warned.

A red weather warning for extreme heat covering an area stretching from London to Swansea and Somerset to Birmingham was issued by the Met Office from 9am on Wednesday to 9pm on Thursday.