A seven-year-old boy who raised the alarm after his father collapsed while they were bait digging on the mud-flats at Cliffs End near Ramsgate has been praised by police for his quick-thinking actions.

The pair were half a mile out off the main Sandwich Road shortly before 5pm on Wednesday (October 29) when the 41-year-old man suffered a suspected heart attack.

The youngsters alerted a person on the beach and they ran to the nearby garage to get help.

Ambulance crews attempted to revive the man on the beach. The coastguard search and rescue helicopter from RAF Wattisham in Suffolk was sent to the scene, landing on the edge of the beach. It flew the man, paramedics and a police officer to the Queen Elizabeth the Queen Mother Hospital at Margate, where the man was confirmed dead.

Further patrol officers and PC Kim Burgess, neighbourhood officer for the Thanet villages, helped family members from Cliffs End village who had gone to the scene, together with concerned residents.

PC Burgess said: “The boy reacted above and beyond his years in exceptionally difficult circumstances. His family should feel so proud of everything he did to help his father.”

~ Listen: Peter Legg, senior watch manager at Dover Coastguard, warns of the dangers of walking on mud-flats >>>