Two friends have been praised by police after they pulled a suicidal woman from the freezing cold sea.

Paulo Cobelli, 20, and Piers Walsh, 19, dashed after the woman as she calmly walked into the water just before 3am.

The pair had spotted her sobbing and hysterical on Brighton seafront a few minutes before the suicide attempt.

The woman, in her early 20s, calmed down after the friends approached her as they walked home after a night out and she told them she was OK.

But, unconvinced, they kept an eye on her and watched in horror as she walked into the sea up to her chest.

Mr Cobelli’s mother, Anna, said: “Both of them are heroes in my book.”

A police spokeswoman said: “We can only offer the utmost praise for these two who so selflessly risked their own lives to save this young woman.

“It was a bitterly cold night and had they not acted so swiftly we could have been dealing with a much more serious incident.”

Mr Cobelli, of Norwich Drive, Brighton, and Mr Walsh, of Crayford Road, had been for a night out when they spotted the woman and plunged into the chilly water on Saturday.

Mr Cobelli said: “It happened pretty quickly so there wasn’t that much to think about it.

“It was just a case of acting rather than thinking.” The pair called paramedics, who took the woman to the Royal Sussex County Hospital in Brighton, where she recovered.