Friday, August 1, 2025 - Siblings Ameiya and
Ricardo Junior have drowned after insisting on going for "one last
swim" at a Spanish beach.
Ameiya and Ricardo, known as Maya and Jubs, from Birmingham,
UK, and their family had been on their first big holiday abroad at the beach
resort of Salou at the start of the summer holidays.
But on Tuesday, July 29, the brother and sister were swept
away to their de@th in front of their family as they were dragged 100m
away from each other in powerful rip-tides.
Their father, Ricardo Senior, had to be rescued in high
winds as he desperately tried to save his children at Llarga Beach.
Now the family has spoken about the nightmare that turned
their lives upside down.
Their mum, Shanice, and dad, both 31, were staying at the
hotel with their six children near the beach. The doomed swim trip came towards
the end of their vacation.
Shanice had taken one of their kids to the toilet along with three other children while dad Ricardo Senior stayed at the beach with Ameiya and Ricardo for them to have one last swim.
But the trio were nowhere to be seen when she returned,
Shanice’s sister Macalia Del Brocco, 46, said.
She told Daily Mail: "She came back out, she
couldn’t see any of them. At that point, she panicked. And it was at that point
the police arrived and things started happening."
Emergency services were called shortly after 8.45pm on July
29, Catalonia’s Civil Protection agency said.
Despite the best efforts of emergency services at the scene, the siblings di£d
at the scene.
Their dad had swallowed "a lot of sea water and was
exhausted," but he was revived.
Shanice's sister Macalia said: "Ricardo is feeling,
obviously, very pained because he was in the water with them, so that’s going
to be hitting him hard.
"That’s not going to disappear from his mind. It’s
going to be a lot of trauma mentally for him to deal with.
"But families pull together, and there will be support
all the way around."
Ameiya and Ricardo Junior’s younger brother Casius, 6, told
their aunt after his siblings’ deaths that "did you know Maya and Jubs are
in heaven now? Juby went to heaven in a helicopter."
The brother and sister have been described by loved ones as
"beautiful" and "bright".
One of the officers who jumped into the water explained that the current was so
strong that the boy and the girl were ripped 100m away from each other even
though they entered the sea in the same place.
Giving his name as Younes A, he told DiariTots21:
"A hotel worker was trying to get one of the three out of the sea when we
arrived.
"We took off our belts with our clothes and threw
ourselves into the sea.
"We were told when we helped get that person out that
another two people were in the sea who could be minors.
"We tried to locate them, saw bits of clothes and
seconds later were able to locate and get a young girl out of the water and
began resuscitation and another police force was the one responsible
for getting the other child out of the sea.
"When the emergency services arrived they took over the
efforts to save them until they said they couldn’t do anything more.
"We don’t know the circumstances leading up to them
getting into difficulties.
"I leapt into the water with two other colleagues to
get the father to safety first before going back to rescue one of the
children."
He added: "There were waves and wind. It was dangerous. There was a lot of swell."
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