Three children drown in Kampot and Kandal

September 30, 2016

Three children drown in Kampot and Kandal

Fri, 30 September 2016

In what is the latest in a litany of drowning cases across the Kingdom in the past two months, two siblings and a boy drowned in two separate cases on Wednesday.

Kampot district police chief Ngem Vet said 11-year-old Suon Sreyleap and her 7-year-old brother Suon Chamrong drowned while they were swimming unsupervised in the canal next to the cottage where they lived in Kampot province.

“Their mother is a KTV hostess and she stayed up the whole night. She took a nap in the morning and her children went swimming [on their own] and ended up drowning,” Vet said, adding that their bodies were discovered when their mother awoke and jumped into the canal after not being able to locate them.

Separately, in Kandal province’s Khsach Kandal district, 7-year-old Keh Kimlong drowned in the Mekong on the same day.

Khsach Kandal deputy police chief Un Yung said Kimlong had accompanied his father to the river to wash their cows, and then swam on his own while his parent was preoccupied.

“When [the father] tried to look for him, he could not see him. Then he screamed for help from the villagers,” Yung said. “After searching for 30 minutes, they found the boy, but he was already dead.”