A CARAVAN park worker has described the moment he helped to pluck the body of a drowned man from the flooded River Severn.

Stewart Spencer, who helps maintain the Ketch Caravan Park & Moorings, spoke hours after he spotted the body wedged against a pontoon.

Mr Spencer said he was planning to row out and remove rubbish from the flooded riverbank at lunchtime yesterday when he saw the corpse face down in the water.

Formal identification was expected to depend upon dental records.

"I noticed something around the iron stanchions," Mr Spencer said. "It didn't quite look like a log, so I got out of the boat. I was 12ft away when I saw it was a head. He was face down and fully-clothed."

He handed a hook used for clearing rubbish to park owner Mike Gourlay, who hooked it through the dead man's belt before tying it to a stanchion.

Fire brigade spokesman Alec Mackie said a crew from Worcester launched the emergency tender's inflatable dinghy to reach the body.

"The man was tangled in the pontoon," he said. "It looked like he'd been in the water for a while."

Worcester police confirmed today that Mary Read, mother of missing 17-year-old Andrew Read, had been informed about the find.

She last saw her son on Monday, November 13, when she dropped him off outside the Old Rectifying House, in Worcester.

Despite appeals and an wide hunt, no trace of the youngster has been found.

Coroners' officer Richard Boulter said formal identification of the body would be carried out later today, together with a post mortem.