Mchinji police spokesperson, Kaitani Lubrino has confirmed the death of a 2 year old boy who died after the canoe he was in with other people including his mother overturned.

The boy identified as Chisomo Innocent was on Sunday, March 5 with her mother Chrissie Kango whose church choir visited colleagues from another church in Lilongwe.

Lubrino said the two places are demarcated by Mtete River and the choir had to hire a canoe to cross the river since it had flooded due to heavy rains. They managed to cross the river on their way going but fate came upon their return.

While on their way back, they reached the river banks at around 6 pm and they had found other people waiting for the same canoe to help them cross the flooded river.

When their turn came, the first group managed to cross safely but things went bad during their second trip which had 15 adults on board and three children. The canoe developed a leakage and started accumulating water through the holes and spaces that forced it to sink and capsize.

Well-wishers came to rescue them from sinking but it was too late to find Chisomo who already had gone missing by then.

The immediate search for him did not yield a thing. It was on Monday when his body was discovered floating by the river at Guwende village.

The postmortem results revealed that the death was due to suffocation.

The deceased hailed from Chalimba village from traditional authority Mabvere in Mchinji.