There are plenty of old wives’ tales that have been disproven, but one that persists is that you shouldn’t swim for a certain period of time after you eat. It turns out that adage was true in the case of a British teen who sadly died while swimming on a full stomach.
The Manchester Evening News reported that Lucy Reed, 15, was with her mother in Cleethorpes, England, in 2023, when she and a friend decided to have a lunch of pizza and fries. The mom reportedly urged her daughter to let her stomach settle a bit before swimming, but Reed took off for the water at around 1 p.m. They had agreed to leave before 2:30 p.m., so when the daughter didn’t show up at the planned time, the mom called for help.
At 2 p.m., emergency services were alerted and by 2:22 p.m., the mom contacted the Humberside Police at and the Cleethorpes Coast Guard. After three hours of searching, a fellow beach goer informed authorities that they saw someone about 2,000 feet out in the water, causing officials to widen their search range.
This was when they discovered her body and called a helicopter to get the girl to a local hospital, where she was sadly declared dead.
Reed officially died of asphyxiation after an autopsy revealed she had inhaled “gastric content” after vomiting and simultaneously fighting a falling tide.
“The tide was falling and [she and her friend, who did survive] rapidly found themselves out of their depth and drifting away from the shore. Neither were strong swimmers,” Greater Lincolnshire Senior Coroner Paul Smith told the outlet. “Although her death was not formally confirmed for several hours, on balance of probability it occurred within minutes of the incident described above. It was the unintended consequence of her swimming on a full stomach.”
He added that that salt water may have played a secondary role in her untimely and tragic death.
