Grieving mum whose son, 16, drowned during heatwave makes desperate plea to Andy Burnham

A grieving mum whose brave and kind teen - whose dream was to become a surgeon and save lives - drowned during the heatwave says: “It will keep happening if they don’t fix it.” Kaddy Ceesay, 33, from Sheffield, cries every day for 16-year-old Muhammed Secka, who drowned in a lake in South Yorkshire during a heatwave on May 26 this year. She is one of the 18 families to sign an open letter to Prime Minister Andy Burnham calling for action. Speaking to the Mirror on Friday, she told how she had just received her son's GCSE results and he’d passed all eight, despite not finishing all his exams papers before he died. “Muhammed was my everything. Muhammed was the hope for the family and now we have none. He wanted to be a surgeon and save lives. He would have made a difference to this country,” she told The Mirror. “I was happy to see how hard he was working going to the library. He was a very respectful young man who loved and cared for people." Kaddy said they moved to the UK from The Gambia when Muhammed was nine years old. “He was ready to be there for the family and be there for the country. He was ready to achieve his goal to save lives. That was his wish, to become a surgeon. He’d say ‘It’s not about the money mum, I want to save lives. “He had applied for college, he was very happy he had succeeded, I got his results yesterday. He didn’t even do the whole paper because he passed away the last week he was supposed to complete his exams. He still got eight papers. “I was at the cemetery when I got his results and saw his teacher there. He was there visiting Muhammed's grave. He couldn’t believe his results as he hadn’t been able to finish all the exams but he was surprised he had passed despite this.” One teacher has also written to the mum to say what an absolute privilege her son was to teach. He said he'd spoken to her eldest son before he died, to tell him how he'd hoped his own son grew up to be as 'compassionate, respectful, humble and considerate of others' as Muhammed. 'It will keep happening' Kaddy, about her decision to sign the open letter, told the Mirror: “It will keep happening if they don’t fix it. So many lives are going. My child is a loss to me every single day, every single day my tears are falling." She told how after he died "everything went quiet" and now she cannot sleep. "I keep remembering how hard he was working to achieve his goals. These kids losing their lives they deserved to live, it's not fair what happened to Muhammed and other kids.” His mum explained it had been the first time he had visited the Rother Valley park after being invited to go by his school pals. She said on the day he died he’d sent her a video at 4pm, saying: ‘Look how it’s busy here mum. It’s very beautiful’. He was always updating me. I could see people inside the water.” Then at 6pm there was a knock at the door from police who said her son was missing and believed to be in the water. He had gone to the country park with 11 pals and they had been standing in the water when he vanished. Kaddy said: “I tried to find out what really happened. I tried to be present, which was really hard for me to be there when they were looking for my child. “I told them I wanted to know how far my child would go, that was really important to me. I knew he was a very clever boy, he’s a student leader. He was even careful about what he was eating. “When they found Muhammed he was close to the edge, he was not in the middle, he was not far away. But they came to me and advised me to go back to the police car to avoid seeing anything as they were taking him out. "He’s a very careful person and he could swim. He is a very brave boy “Muhammed just disappeared, they said. The police told me he’d fallen off a drop." The mum said she kept asking how far he had gone into the water and the officer came back to the mum and told her: ‘I am sorry Mrs Ceesay but your child didn’t go far’. "When I asked how did he get drowned? The police said ‘There was a drop, a hole just one step back and once there (he) could not take himself out.’ “People have to understand it’s hard to pull yourself out. This is what happened. “It breaks my heart every day, not only the results. It keeps breaking my heart because they don’t do anything about it. “What happened to him was there was a drop and if that’s not repaired it could happen to anyone. “Nobody can bring my child back any more, he’s gone for good, it’s not just Rother Valley, it can be any lake, they need to fix this. The Government has a big responsibility.”