I seem to remember there was a potential CCTV sighting at around 5.40am around Hotwell Road by the River Avon, back in the very early days but I can’t recall what happened with it, could it just not be confirmed? This is also the time Jack’s Find my Phone app says he is at an address at Granby Hill in the Hotwells area and his phone is receiving WhatsApp messages, so I was curious.
I don't recall there ever being CCTV or potential CCTV at 5.40am. There was one CCTV that was proven not to be Jack, but that was before 5.40am, so that could be the one you mean.
How many deaths occur in England, regarding canals and towpaths? I have noticed they have become more common, compared to 20 years ago.
I found an article saying there were 242 canal related deaths recorded across the UK between 2013 and 2020. 157 of those were in England. Between 2017 and 2022, 66 people died in Greater Manchester’s waterways, with a five-year record high of 15 deaths in 2021. I know it's not Bristol's stats, but gives some kind of morbid insight into the regularity (or irregularity?) of this happening.
There are several different datasets and they seem to provide different numbers. Some seem to suggest people died "on" the network of canals so they may not all be drownings but they may have died nearby the canal but it gets logged as a canal death (can't confirm this, but this is how their wording makes it sound).
And am I right in thinking that water specialists and those experienced in the movement of water and tides looked into this case at the time of disappearance (and shortly after) and said that they'd have expected a body to have been washed up by then if Jack had indeed perished in the water?
JMO.
Yes. The family posted about this very topic and discussed it during an online interview. Not an exact quote, but Jack's mother explained that there's a specialist in charge of the waterways/locks in Bristol who said that they'd never had a body that
didn't show up in that area if the missing person was suspected of drowning and that he believed if Jack was in water, he'd have been found.
Of course, that doesn't rule it out, but it means that even a senior figure who works with those waters everyday doesn't seem to think Jack will have gone into the water.
Playing devil's advocate...it does contradict other reports and articles I read that said if Jack did enter those waters, the flow of the current leads rapidly out of Bristol and the chances of ever being found are slim to none.
It's hard to know who is accurate. Personally I don't think Jack entered water and I explained why in the past few pages. I could be wrong, though.
