A 7-year-old boy and his mom both died after he fell from a ferry and she jumped into the sea to try to rescue him

• A seven-year-old boy and his mom died when he fell from a ferry and she tried to rescue him.
• The incident occurred during a sailing from Sweden to Poland on Thursday.

A seven-year-old boy and his mother died after he fell overboard from a ferry and she jumped into the water to try to rescue him.

The child fell overboard from the Stena Spirit ferry on Thursday afternoon into the Baltic sea, Stena Line told Insider.

The ferry was sailing from Karlskrona in Sweden to Gdynia, Poland when they fell into the water about halfway through the journey.

Polish police spokesman Mariusz Ciarka told Reuters that officers passed on the "terrible news" to the family after Swedish officials confirmed their deaths.

A crew member working on the ferry told Poland's TVN24: "There was an alarm and a message. The engines were immediately shut down. After a while, the captain announced that there was a man overboard."

A search and rescue operation was "immediately" launched after Stena Line was alerted to the incident at 4:15 p.m. local time, the company said. The boy and his mother were found about an hour later and taken in separate helicopters to a Swedish hospital.

Polish newspaper Fakt reported that the boy was in the sea for 66 minutes and his mother for 59 minutes.

A murder investigation has now been launched, Swedish prosecutors told Insider on Friday, adding that the nature of their inquiries could change.

Stena Line said it was cooperating with authorities and would not "speculate" on the cause of the deaths.

"We are working with both Swedish and Polish authorities where two separate investigations have been initiated, and also Danish authorities as the ferry is registered in Denmark," a Stena Line representative told Insider.

The ferry continued its journey to Karlskrona on Friday and later returned to Gdynia.

On Sunday a woman who fell from the 10th deck of a Royal Caribbean cruise ship survived after a rescue operation by crew members. The ship was headed to Willemstad, Curacao and was near the Dominican Republic when the incident occurred. Experts said it was a "miracle" she was rescued alive.

Last December a woman died after falling from a MSC cruise ship 18 miles off the coast of Florida. A search and rescue operation was launched and the 36-year-old woman's body was recovered about two and a half hours later.