• Four boys died after falling into an icy lake at a park in Kingshurst.
• Finlay Butler, Samuel Butler, Thomas Stewart, and Jack Johnson, died.
• Three of the boys were still in the water for more than 20 minutes: Court.

An inquest heard that four boys who fell into an icy lake last week and drowned.

Finlay Butler, 8, and his brother Samuel, 6, as well as their cousin Thomas Stewart, 11, and another boy named Jack Johnson, 10, all died.

They were taken out of the water on December 11 at Babbs Mill Park in Kingshurst, West Midlands.

The coroner’s court heard that the boys were still in the water more than 20 minutes after the first call to 999.

The Birmingham and Solihull Coroner’s Court was told that three of the boys were pulled out of the water 22 minutes after the first one. The fourth boy was pulled out nine minutes after the first three.

Last week, it was reported that a police officer tried to punch through the ice to get to them, and Detective Inspector Jim Edmonds praised the “heroic efforts of everyone involved.”

He said that a police investigation would “find out what really happened at the lake and how the boys ended up in the water.”

The hearing on Monday was put off, and on July 6 there will be a full inquest into all four deaths.

Louise Hunt, the chief coroner for Birmingham and Solihull, told the families that it was a “devastating tragedy” and that she was sorry.

She said it was hard to understand how much pain and sadness the families were going through.

Ms. Hunt said that the July inquest would look at what led to the deaths and what caused them.

It will also have overviews of the three emergency services that were involved and what they did.

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