Santa Cruz de Tenerife 12 Mar. (Europa Press) –
A team of professional divers recently ventured into the waters off the Coast of Charco del Viento, located in the municipality of La Guancha in Tenerife, in search of Arek, a 15-year-old Polish boy who has been missing for 20 days.
However, after more than two hours of searching, the divers were unable to find the child’s body, as reported by ‘Canary Islands, 1,500 km of coast’.
The divers and free divers, Miguel Ángel Pérez and Adrián Gos, accompanied by Teresa Martínez, a psychologist who has been assisting the family and who is also a lifeguard, approached the site equipped with the full rescue team.
Thus, for approximately 120 minutes, they undertook dives in a state of apnea, examining caves, grooves, and lava tubes in a seabed characterised by its thousands of twists and turns and extreme difficulty due to the sea conditions.
Arek disappeared at 11:30 am on Saturday, February 22, while searching for crabs and snails alongside his 7-year-old sister, when a large wave hit the shore and pulled them into the water.
During this moment, the platform highlights, the girl’s father leapt into the sea to rescue them but could only grasp his daughter’s arm, while Arek was swept away by the waves’ force.
Arek had arrived on the island of Tenerife with his parents and younger sister to enjoy a holiday in the southern part of the island and was unaware that a pre-alert had been activated throughout the autonomous community due to coastal phenomena, with waves reaching heights of up to 4 metres.
Several hours after the incident, the victim’s family received support from two psychologists, Teresa Martínez and Karolina Walczyk, provided through the General Emergency Department of the Canary Islands Government, along with translator Pedro de Gracia.
The family has since returned to Poland and expressed to the platform their feelings of being “heartbroken, shattered, without the ability to react, and overwhelmed by shock”, particularly focusing on their young daughter, aged seven.
“Do not stop searching for him”
In recent days, the mother, Kasia, shared that she constantly envisions her “dear Arek alone in the cold water” and reminisces about “sitting together in a warm home.”
With a trembling voice, she reiterated her primary plea: “Do not stop searching for him, please. We need to bring him home.”
While waiting for the pre-alert concerning coastal phenomena to be lifted along the Tenerife coast, a new operation is already being planned to access this challenging marine area in search of Arek, with collaboration from the drowning prevention platform.
Coincidentally, these days also mark the anniversary of the disappearance of Yassine and Alejandro, two boys aged 16 and 17 respectively, who went fishing on the morning of Friday, March 8, 2024, along the coast of El Confital.
The platform notes that “three families, two Spanish and one Polish, remain in the unbearable uncertainty of not having recovered the bodies of their young loved ones, a situation that holds profound significance for initiating and completing the difficult process of mourning.”
