THE mother of a young bartender who drowned in the River Ouse last July says her biggest hope for 2012 is that no one else will die in York’s rivers.

Vicki Horrocks says she hoped The Press’s Think, Don’t Swim campaign – which included a film featuring a harrowing interview with her and her daughter Abbi in a funeral parlour – will continue to persuade young people not to take chances with the Ouse and Foss. She said: “I really hope that in 2012, no one else will go through what I and my family went through in 2011.

“We are left trying to pick up the pieces of a jigsaw that will never again be complete. My family is incomplete and I will never stop hurting.”

The campaign was launched after Richard Horrocks jumped from a balcony into the Ouse following his last shift at a bar, becoming the third person to die in the river in 2011, and after fire chiefs revealed their rescue boat was being sent out about once a week to help rescue people from the water.

The Press reported recently that the boat had been called out another four times since Richard’s tragic death to rescue people.

The film, made by Christopher David, of award-winning York filmmakers Flash Frame Productions, has already been viewed on Youtube more than 3,200 times.

As well as the interviews, it features a fictional dramatisation about a young man who goes “skinny dipping” in the Ouse, with fatal consequences. Vicki said she found being interviewed for the film really tough, but had been determined to go through with it in the hope it would help prevent further tragedies.

She said the whole family had been “absolutely dreading” Christmas without Richard and it had been a very different occasion.

“We didn’t do any of the normal things we do as a family and changed them,” she said. “We got through it, but I would hope no more families have to go through it as well in future.”