For 90 minutes the police kept searching for the 46-year-old man who disappeared in the Rhine in Cologne-Mülheim. According to police reports, the alarm was raised at 3.58pm after the man had gone swimming in the Rhine a good 15 minutes earlier and did not return. The police searched with helicopters, boats and on foot, helped by the fire brigade, for the man who his friends said was a non-swimmer. Prior to the incident the friends had partied at the river banks and drank alcohol.