Police Scotland recovered the body of an 11-year-old girl in the Gore Glen Woodland Park search near Gorebridge in Midlothian on Thursday afternoon. The girl was found in the Gore Water near Shanks Bridge at 4.25pm and pronounced dead at the scene.
Police said they were first made aware of concern for the child at 12.40pm on Thursday, August 6, 2026. Her family are aware, and the death is being treated as unexplained while enquiries continue to establish the full circumstances.
Gore Glen and Shanks Bridge
The timeline shows the response spread across the same area over several hours. The Scottish Ambulance Service received a call at 2.33pm and sent two ambulances, a special operations team and a critical care paramedic. Scottish Fire and Rescue Service mobilised two appliances at 4.29pm to an incident on Shank Bridge near Gorebridge.
That sequence matters for anyone trying to follow what happened at Gore Glen: the search began with a concern for a child, then moved into a recovery operation near the water. The emergency response included police, ambulance and fire crews working in the same stretch of ground near the woodland park.
Police Scotland enquiries
Scottish Fire and Rescue Service said crews left after ensuring the area was safe. Police Scotland has not said how the girl entered the Gore Water, and the unanswered question now is the same one that will shape the inquiry: how the 11-year-old came to be in the water near Shanks Bridge.
For the girl's family, the immediate fact is that she has been found and identified by police, but the circumstances around her death remain unresolved. The next step is the ongoing police enquiry into the full sequence from the first concern at 12.40pm to the recovery at 4.25pm.
