GIFU (TR) – A family outing on the river took a tragic turn after a Jet Ski rammed into a rubber boat on Sunday, killing two boys aged 3 and 11.
Gifu Prefectural Police received an emergency call at around 2:50 p.m. saying a Jet Ski collided with a rubber boat carrying a man and his three children on Kiso River near Shimonakacho Shiroyashiki, Hashima City, the Mainichi Shimbun reports (June 12).
The father told authorities the Jet Ski “was tipping over sideways as it crashed into the rubber boat.”
Police said a woman in her 20s was riding the Jet Ski. An investigation is under way to determine the details.
Authorities said the woman and the four family members were transported to the hospital, where the two boys were confirmed dead. The woman, father and daughter sustained non-life-threatening injuries.
A woman believed to be the mother of the boys wept as she told the Sankei Shimbun after leaving the hospital, “I lost my two boys. I’m in too much grief to speak right now.”
“Screams of children”
The Sankei reported that a friend of the boys’ father who rushed to the hospital after hearing the news appeared to be in shock.
“I heard it was their second time going to that riverbank,” the friend said. “When I went with them last time there were people going crazy on their Jet Skis, so we made sure to stay away from them.”
The friend said the family was Japanese-Brazilian.
A man in his 60s was tending to his rice paddy some 100 meters from the incident site when he “heard the screams of children and an adult crying for help.”
“I remember thinking something serious must have happened,” the man told the Sankei.
The incident took place some 1.5 kilometers downstream in the Kiso River, which reportedly sees many Jet Ski users during weekends.