Bracklinn Falls incident: Teenage boy becomes 12th person to die in open water during heatwave
A 16-year-old boy became the 12th person to die after being forced into the water during the recent hot weather.
Police were called to Bracklinn Falls, near Callander in Stirlingshire, at around 6.45pm on Thursday following concerns about the teenager.
His body was later pulled from the water.
A Police Scotland spokesman said: “The death is not being treated as suspicious and a report will be sent to the procurator fiscal.”
The procurator fiscal is the authority that investigates deaths in Scotland.
Bracklinn Waterfall is located in the Lomond Lomond and Trossachs National Park.
It follows a string of similar deaths from open water swimming during a record-breaking heatwave in Kew Gardens, west London, on Tuesday, when temperatures soared to 35.1C.
There were deaths in places such as South Yorkshire, West Yorkshire, Cornwall, Hampshire, Warwickshire, Cheshire, Pembrokeshire, Lincolnshire and Lancashire.
On Thursday, the body of a 14-year-old boy was found in the River Thames, near Donnington Bridge in Oxford.
Thames Valley Police confirmed the boy’s family had been notified and his death was treated as “unexplained but not suspicious”.
The hot weather is expected to ease for many people over the weekend, according to the Met Office.
However, a yellow heat health alert has been issued by the UK Health Security Agency (UKHSE) for east and south-east England and London, running from 4pm on Thursday until 8pm on Saturday.
The UKHSA said this meant water-related incidents could increase and warned of the risks of cold water shock and drowning.
Data released Wednesday by the National Water Safety Forum (NWSF) showed 202 water-related accidental deaths in 2025.
The majority (57 percent) occurred in inland water bodies such as rivers, lakes, reservoirs, quarries and lakes.
While it’s too early to tell whether the number of water-related deaths during this heat wave is “unusual,” hot weather is often associated with an increase in accidental drownings, an NWSF spokesperson said.
The data showed that in 2025, most of the events occurred in August.
According to the Office for National Statistics, 87 deaths due to natural drowning and submersion were recorded in England and Wales in 2022; There were 96 deaths in 2023 and 73 in 2024.
