Five adults, including two couples died on a river in Ohio Sunday after several of them went into the water to help another person who was struggling to swim, authorities announced Monday.
The group had gathered Sunday along the Scioto River in the Columbus suburb of Powell when one of them went into the river for a swim. “That’s when the tragedy started to occur,” Delaware County Sheriff Jeffrey Balzer said at a news conference. He said others who jumped in to help also began struggling.
A motorist called 911 after spotting a frightened child with the group who was running along a nearby road to seek help, Balzer said.
Rescue crews searching the water later Sunday found two women who were pronounced dead at a hospital, Balzer said. The bodies of three men were found in the river on Monday, said Tracy Whited, a spokesperson for the Delaware County Sheriff’s Office. Authorities did not say exactly where the victims were found.
Authorities Tuesday said four of the five adults were Honduran citizens — Jose Mario Pineda Dias, 33, his wife, Marina Suyapa Regalado, 28, and another married couple whose names have not yet been released.
The fifth adult also has yet to be identified.
Flabia Zamora, director of consular affairs at the Honduran Foreign Ministry, told reporters Tuesday that they were working with U.S. authorities to bring their bodies home. She also said the couple’s children are in the care of the state of Ohio and that arrangements will be made to reunite them with relatives in Honduras.
One of the children, a boy wrapped only in a towel, fled the riverbank in a panic and ascended to the road as the adults were drowning. According to a passing driver who called 911, “He was screaming, ‘Mama! Mama!’ and he was about to come out onto the road, and he was crying.” She said she was afraid he was headed onto a multilane road that snakes along the Scioto’s eastern banks.
The river was running high and fast on Sunday, according to data from a U.S. Geological Survey water gauge at the nearby dam. The data shows the water was flowing at a rate of about 350 cubic feet (10 cubic meters) per second on Sunday — more than a fourfold increase over a three-day span, and more than double the average rate.
The tragedy occurred two days after five people were killed in southern Utah after a flash flood swept through scenic red rock canyons during a hiking excursion.
Lt. Heather Byers, of the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, said rivers can be deceptively calm on the surface.
“Even though the water doesn’t seem to be moving very quickly, you can still get swept away in very slow-moving water,” she said. “Also, since you can’t always see the bottom, you never know if you’re in, you know, you could be in 2 to 3 feet of water, what you’re comfortable standing in, and then the next thing you know you’re at 4 or 5 feet.”
Besides the currents and the depths, people can catch a foot between the rocks, snag their clothes on a branch or lose their balance on slippery algae.
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