A witness who saw seven-year-old tourist Sloane Mattingly die after being swallowed by a sand hole said an unidentified adult had dug a “huge” hole. He estimates the hole was at least 18 feet wide and 6 feet high.
“I was walking along the beach and I saw this guy, about 40 years old, thin, medium height. He was digging a really big hole,” Harry Defina said. told NBC Miami. Lauderdale-by-the-Sea tragedy last Tuesday.
“I looked at him and he turned around and I walked away…I didn’t think to go up and tell him, ‘Stop,'” the unidentified man said. he spoke about.
“I’m even more upset that someone would suggest that those kids dug the hole,” he said of Mattingly and her 9-year-old brother, who also fell into the hole but were pulled out alive. Ta.
“They didn’t dig that hole. It was huge, ended up being about 18 feet by 6 feet,” he recalled.
Dafina soon witnessed the tragedy unfold as her children, who were vacationing in Florida from Indiana, were swallowed up by the same giant hole.
“I can see children in the hole. I could see a little bit of a boy, but that’s all I could see,” Defina said, her voice breaking.
“We’ll never be able to finish this… All I could see was the top of the girl’s head,” he said.
“I saw my father. He was just lying there.”
The father managed to pull his son out, but the girl remained trapped for more than 20 minutes. She was later pronounced dead at Broward Health Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale.
The first-grader’s mother, Therese, said her daughter was “the purest human being” in a message posted on the family’s GoFundMe page.
“Yesterday, while we were here on vacation, a freak accident happened and our greatest seven and a half years were taken away from us,” she said. “Please don’t say you’re sorry for our loss… don’t do that to us. We experienced the purest human being and were forever changed by her.” she wrote.
A fundraiser to help the family pay for funeral expenses had raised more than $145,000 by Monday morning.
Friends and family of the Mattingly family in Fort Wayne, Indiana are trying to support the family after an unimaginable tragedy.
Burn Boot Camp, the gym that Therese belonged to, was also collecting donations to support her family.
“Mama Therese was a dedicated member of the Burn for over two years and Sloane and her brother Maddox were regulars at Childwatch.” Burn Bootcamp wrote on Facebook.
“They moved to Fort. Wayne remained connected to the community here in 2020 and visited often. Many of our Carmel members know that the Mattingly family lived in Fishers. “I know this family well, including the owner, Kristen, who also owned the Fisher’s store while attending the school,” the post reads. “In the Byrne community in the Indy area, this is an issue that hits very close to home.”
Video of the horrifying incident shows first responders and good Samaritans desperately digging sand out of the hole to rescue the girl.
During the desperate rescue operation, firefighters could be seen using shovels and boards to clear sand from the hole and tried to contact the girl.
According to one study, between 1997 and 2007, there were 52 cases in which people were buried in holes by collapsed sand, and 31 of them died. New England Medical Journal report.
The victims ranged in age from 3 to 21 years old.
