A mother of three drowned while trying to get her 12-year-old daughter to swim in a Tennessee lake after the family only spoke Spanish and failed to heed warning signs about the dangerous waters, her relatives said.
Amarilia Liliana Vamaka died on Aug. 4 when she slipped into Percy Priest Lake in Nashville while trying to help her daughter swim but started swimming herself. WTVF reported.
Her husband, Martin Ambrosio, was swimming in another part of the lake, but when he rushed to help, his wife had already jumped into the water.
“Where is your mom? Where is your mom?” I asked. [His daughter] “She said she had already gone in the water,” he told the station in Spanish.
Six passersby quickly jumped into action to help Bamaca, some of whom performed CPR until emergency services arrived.
The mother of three was taken to hospital but was taken off life support later that week.
While her family is mourning her death, Ambrosio is using the occasion to campaign for signage to protect the Spanish-speaking community.
Because he and his family don’t speak English, they didn’t heed signs posted at the lake warning swimmers about the water.
“We don’t know how to read English. [and] “We didn’t see any signs,” Ambrosio said, adding that clear signs in English and Spanish indicating dangerous areas on the lake would have helped.
The loss of his wife of 15 years was particularly hard on Ambrosio.
“We are sad,” he told the station. “She was an open person, smiling, happy, joking. She loved to be friends with people…”
His family turned to their faith for comfort after her sudden death.
“We pray in God’s name that he will give us the strength to get through this and move forward,” he said.
A GoFundMe campaign was set up to cover the costs of repatriating Vacama’s body to his native Guatemala, and by Tuesday morning had raised more than $6,000 of its $10,000 goal.
