The man who died while sledging near a Kinross-shire loch spent 20 desperate minutes clinging to the ice while watched by his terrified family.
The 47-year-old got into difficulty after falling through the ice at the frozen loch while on a family day out on Monday. It is understood his wife and two young daughters witnessed him falling through the ice and dialled 999.
A source said the family had been walking on the ice, with the father further from the shore than his family. Fire and ambulance crews rushed to Dow Loch at around 3pm and spent several hours in a search and rescue operation.
They were met at the scene by the man’s frantic older daughter and raced on foot across the fields but the man had already disappeared from sight.
The search was called off around midnight but resumed around 11.30am on Tuesday.
On Monday night a marker buoy was placed over the man’s last known position but drifted overnight and Kinross firefighters had to be brought in to pinpoint the location.
Specialist divers from Police Scotland combed the bottom of the loch using sonar to locate the missing man. The divers are thought to be focusing on an area around 30 metres from the shore and entered the water around 3pm 24 hours after the tragedy.
The missing man is thought to reside in the Kinross-shire area. Police warned of the dangers of straying on to frozen water.
Rab Middlemiss, of the Scottish Fire and Rescue Service, said: “Our rescue operations have entered a different phase where we have the Police Scotland underwater search team using a sonar device to take a scan of the bed of the loch to see if that can assist us in our search operations.
“We have the local crew from Kinross who have come back to the scene and they are using their knowledge, from being first on the scene, to pinpoint the location that the person was last seen in before they disappeared underneath the surface of the ice.
“He had disappeared below the surface before any of the emergency services arrived.
Sergeant Ian Shepherd, of Police Scotland, said: “According to the witnesses on scene he had fallen through the ice but hadn’t disappeared under it and had been able to hang on to the ice sheet.
“We think he did this for about 20 minutes but unfortunately by the time we arrived there was nobody visible. The family were really distraught.
“The chances of survival would have been absolutely nil so we have moved from a rescue to a recovery.”
The search was called off yesterday at 4.40pm, and David Weir, dive team supervisor, said conditions had presented a challenge to the divers.
He said: “It’s difficult conditions with the weather and the coldness. We’ve had to clear the ice on the surface.”