https://www.birminghammail.co.uk/news/midlands-news/mum-five-drowned-unimaginable-walsall-33972121
There are some odd things about this story.
Lots of stories lately of people drowning in canals but they seem to avoid the obvious question which is, why didn’t they just stand up? And the channel depth of canals includes the silt layer which covers the actual bottom, which can make canals a few inches shallower in places. There’s a myth that silt deepens canals, when it does the opposite.
Canals in the UK are still water, and do not have currents. So it’s not like she got swept off her feet by a current.
This story has been all over Facebook lately in the UK. Many people have commented asking why she didn’t just stand up, and that question got a lot of likes, but no actual answers.
People drown in pools all the fucking time, especially when entry is unintentional. It’s even worse in a canal. The bottom can be slippery. There can be currents. You can be tangled in heavy clothes and accessories not intended for swimming. You can literally go into shock and panic into very illogical and counterproductive attempts at self-rescue. You can hit your head and lose consciousness or be disoriented, it only takes a few moments and a single panic-stricken gasp to ingest a lungful of water you are not going to be able to recover from without rescue.
Water is very dangerous and deserves serious respect which you don’t seem to be giving it, and to be fair, most people don’t. Once you have a close call with water, you’ll understand. It goes from fun and harmless to extremely scary almost instantly. Take some lifeguard courses. It’s no joke, at all, and it will kill you without remorse.
Can the bottom be slippery enough for someone to not regain their footing? People can stand up on ice, for example.
There are also plenty of videos of people slipping on ice and eating it over and over again trying to stand up. I don’t know the circumstances of this story to say definitely nothing fishy happened, or definitely something fishy did happen, but drowning in shallow water, in itself, is not necessarily suspicious.