Five-year-old girl Alexia Walenkaki killed by falling tree while playing in London park

Alexia Walenkaki's mother saw the horrific accident on Friday

A five-year-old girl has been killed by a falling tree as she played in a park in London.

Alexia Walenkaki was in Mile End Park with her mother when the accident happened on Friday.

Police said part of a tree the rope swing she was playing on fell on Alexia at around 5.30pm.

Paramedics and passers-by were unable to save the child and she died just over an hour later in hospital.

Her mother told the Evening Standard she had been watching as her little girl played with friends and ran to save her.

“All of a sudden I see this log falling down and I started screaming,” Vida Kwotuah, from Poplar, said.

“Just moments before she was on my lap, then she was lying there in the recovery position and people were doing CPR on her. I was just in shock.”

Ms Kwotuah said she keeps expecting to walk into a room and see her daughter playing with her dolls as usual but “she’s not there”.

Alexia, who attended Stepney Greencoat Church of England Primary School, would have celebrated her sixth birthday on Saturday.

A spokesperson for the Metropolitan Police said officers and paramedics from the London Ambulance Service (LAS) arrived to find her in cardiac arrest, adding: “At this early stage officers believe a tree fell on the girl.”

She was taken to a hospital in east London but died at 6.43pm.

A post-mortem was due to be carried out today and a joint investigation into the cause of Alexia’s death is being carried out by police and the Health and Safety Executive.