THE brother of a missing Huddersfield man is bidding to set up an underwater rescue team on the Thames in time for the Olympics.
Christian Cooper, brother of missing Golcar man Stephen Cooper, is now working with charity SARbot, who aim to set up underwater rescue teams across the country.
A week after Steven Cooper’s disappearance in January 2008 his car was found near to Loch Laggan in Scotland – but it took his family more than three-and-a-half years to get an underwater unit to search the waterway.
The loch was finally searched by a SARbot underwater robot which found no trace of him.
But the robot is also able to rescue people who are drowning and Christian has now taken a key role with the charity in the hope of saving more lives.
The charity’s robot is currently being used by the Metropolitan Police to look for the remains of murdered EastEnders actress Gemma McCluskie in Regents Canal in Hackney and Christian is pushing for a rescue station on the Thames in London, one of the country’s drowning hotspots.
Last year the Royal National Lifeboat Institute (RNLI) was called out 214 times to help people who had fallen into the Thames.
SARbot plans to raise £40m to launch more than 146 underwater rescue units across the country and aims to have a response unit in all 96 counties in the UK and 50 at a range of coastal locations.
