On a summer Tuesday in West Sussex, a London family of four entered the sea at Shoreham Fort and did not come back whole. Hassan El-Khawas, his wife Zeina Alayn, and their teenage daughter Sara died that afternoon; their youngest, six-year-old Saja, survived the water only to die in hospital three days later. Police found no wrongdoing — only the particular cruelty of an accident that erases an entire family in an ordinary afternoon. What remains is grief, in London, in Shoreham, and in a Palestinian community that has lost four of its own to a summer day gone irreversibly wrong.
Six-year-old dies after Shoreham sea tragedy that claimed parents and sister
Four family members died in a drowning incident: parents Hassan El-Khawas (55) and Zeina Alayn (37), daughter Sara (14), and six-year-old Saja El-Khawas.
An entire family unit gone in an afternoon
Mark
What made this particular incident resonate so widely? It seems to have touched something beyond the immediate community.
Mimi
It's the completeness of the loss. An entire family unit—parents and both children—gone in an afternoon. That kind of total erasure is rare enough to shock people, and it happened in broad daylight at a public beach.
Mark
The police called it an accident. Do we know what actually went wrong in the water?
Mimi
The source material doesn't specify. The investigation found no third-party involvement, no foul play. It was simply something that happened—a miscalculation, a current, a moment where the sea's power overwhelmed them. Sometimes that's all there is.
Mark
The youngest child survived the initial rescue but died three days later. That's a particular kind of cruelty, isn't it?
Mimi
Yes. There was a window where hope was possible. The child was alive, in hospital, fighting. For seventy-two hours, the family and the community could imagine a different ending. Then that possibility closed.
Mark
How did the authorities frame their response?
Mimi
With genuine weight. The police chief didn't minimize it or hide behind procedure. He acknowledged the devastation directly and asked for privacy—not as a deflection, but as a recognition that some griefs shouldn't be performed for an audience.
Mark
What stays with you about this story?
Mimi
The ordinariness of the moment before. A family visiting a beach on a summer afternoon. That's all it was. And then it wasn't.
Il Polso
- A family of four entered the sea at Shoreham Fort around 2pm on Tuesday and within hours all four had been pulled from the water in distress.
- Police, paramedics, coastguard crews, and a lifeboat converged rapidly, but the rescue came too late for three of the four — both parents and the fourteen-year-old daughter died that day.
- Six-year-old Saja was brought out alive and rushed to hospital in critical condition, becoming the fragile centre of three days of desperate hope.
- On Friday, Saja died, completing a loss that had begun Tuesday and now left no survivors from a family that had simply come to the beach for the day.
- Sussex Police reviewed CCTV and witness accounts and concluded there was no foul play — a finding that closes the investigation but offers no comfort to those left behind.
- Chief Superintendent James Collis publicly asked for privacy for the grieving wider family, as a community of emergency responders, neighbours, and relatives absorbs a tragedy that will not fade quickly.
On a summer Tuesday in West Sussex, a London family of four entered the sea at Shoreham Fort and did not come back whole. Hassan El-Khawas, his wife Zeina Alayn, and their teenage daughter Sara died that afternoon; their youngest, six-year-old Saja, survived the water only to die in hospital three days later. Police found no wrongdoing — only the particular cruelty of an accident that erases an entire family in an ordinary afternoon. What remains is grief, in London, in Shoreham, and in a Palestinian community that has lost four of its own to a summer day gone irreversibly wrong.
On a Tuesday afternoon in August, a London family arrived at Shoreham Fort in West Sussex for what should have been an ordinary summer outing. Hassan El-Khawas, fifty-five, his wife Zeina Alayn, thirty-seven, and their two daughters — Sara, fourteen, and six-year-old Saja — entered the sea around two o'clock. Within hours, emergency services had been called and all four were pulled from the water. Hassan, Zeina, and Sara did not survive the day. Only the youngest, Saja, was brought out alive, rushed to hospital in critical condition.
For three days, Saja remained hospitalised while her family's wider circle — relatives in London, the Palestinian community in Britain — waited. On Friday, she died, and the loss that had begun on Tuesday became total. The family had no survivors.
Sussex Police reviewed CCTV footage and gathered witness accounts. What they found was a tragedy without malice: no third party, no foul play, only the sudden and terrible kind of accident that cannot be predicted or undone. Hassan El-Khawas was a British citizen of Palestinian descent; the legal notice of Saja's death was issued through solicitors acting for Guy's and St Thomas' NHS foundation trust and the Palestinian Forum in Britain.
Chief Superintendent James Collis acknowledged the weight of the outcome in a public statement, describing the devastation felt by the family, the Shoreham community, and the emergency responders who had answered the call that afternoon. He asked the public to allow the family privacy in their grief. The beach at Shoreham Fort, a place of summer days and family outings, now carries the memory of an afternoon that took four lives and left a community quietly, irreparably marked.
On Tuesday afternoon, a family from London made their way to Shoreham Fort in West Sussex, drawn to the beach as so many families are on a summer day. Hassan El-Khawas, his wife Zeina Alayn, and their two daughters—Sara, fourteen, and six-year-old Saja—entered the water around two o'clock. Within hours, all four would be pulled from the sea. Three would not survive.
Emergency responders arrived quickly. Police, paramedics, coastguard crews, and a lifeboat converged on the scene after reports came in that four people were in difficulty in the water. The rescue effort was swift, but the sea had already claimed most of what mattered. Hassan El-Khawas, fifty-five, and his wife Zeina Alayn, thirty-seven, died that day. Their older daughter Sara, fourteen years old, also perished. Only Saja, the youngest, was pulled from the water alive.
The child was rushed to hospital in critical condition, clinging to life in the days that followed. Her parents and sister were gone. The family's wider circle—relatives in London, the Palestinian community in Britain—could only wait and hope. For three days, Saja remained hospitalized, fighting. On Friday, she died.
Sussex Police opened an investigation into what had happened. Officers reviewed CCTV footage from the area and gathered accounts from witnesses who had been present. The picture that emerged was one of tragedy without malice. There was no evidence of foul play, no third party involved in the drowning. What emerged instead was the conclusion that this was an accident—the kind of sudden, terrible accident that families cannot predict or prevent, the kind that leaves communities reeling.
The family had traveled from their home in London specifically to visit Shoreham. Hassan El-Khawas was a British citizen of Palestinian descent, a detail confirmed by the Palestinian embassy. The legal notice confirming Saja's death came from solicitors acting on behalf of Guy's and St Thomas' NHS foundation trust and the Palestinian Forum in Britain.
Chief Superintendent James Collis of Sussex Police released a statement acknowledging the weight of what had occurred. He spoke of the devastation felt by the wider family, by the Shoreham community, by the emergency responders who had answered the call that afternoon. "This heartbreaking update is one we all feared," he said, his words carrying the exhaustion of someone who had dreaded this outcome from the moment the rescue began. He asked the public to grant the family privacy in their grief, to step back and let them mourn without intrusion.
The incident has left marks that will not fade quickly. The beach at Shoreham Fort, a place meant for summer days and family outings, has become the site of a tragedy that took four lives in a single afternoon. The emergency responders who worked that day carry the weight of it. The community carries it. And somewhere in London, a family that was whole on Tuesday morning is now fractured beyond repair.
Citazioni salienti
This heartbreaking update is one we all feared in the aftermath of Tuesday's tragic events.— Chief Superintendent James Collis, Sussex Police
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