A MAN from Downton has died after a canoeing accident in Scotland.
Michael Tattersall, 29, was in a group of two kayakers and two swimmers in the Firth of Forth near Edinburgh.
A rescue operation was launched just after 10.30pm when one of the swimmers managed to get to shore and raised the alarm that the others were in trouble.
Lifeboats and police, fire and ambulance crews attended but Mr Tattersall wasn’t found until about three hours later by an RAF rescue helicopter.
He was unconscious and suffering from hypothermia and was taken to Edinburgh Royal Infirmary but later died.
The remaining swimmer made it ashore and the other canoeist was found by coastguards just before 11pm.
It is believed Mr Tattersall, whose nickname was Moby, used to live in Downton and he was a pupil at Bishop Wordsworth’s in Salisbury until 2000, when he went on to study mathematics at the University of Essex and then Duchy College in Cornwall.
At the time of the accident he was living in the Granton area of Edinburgh and worked for training and development company InsideOut Scotland.
source: dailyecho.co.uk
