Heartbreaking 911 audio has revealed the frantic moments beachgoers tried to save a seven-year-old girl after she was fatally buried by a collapsed sand hole.
A panicked witness can be heard telling the operator how the mother of 7-year-old Sloan Mattingly desperately screamed, “My daughter is there.”
“Everyone is screaming,” the caller continued, as people shouted in the background: “They don’t see his head, they don’t see his head.”
After about 20 minutes, the young woman was finally pulled from the sand on Lauderdale-by-the-Sea beach in Florida, but tragically succumbed to her injuries and was pronounced dead on arrival at the hospital.
Sloan Mattingly, 7, died after being buried for about 20 minutes. His heartbroken father said she was “full of life”
A witness to the tragedy said “everyone is screaming” after the sand hole Sloan was playing in collapsed, before dozens of bystanders rushed to help pull her out.
Witnesses said the horror unfolded after Sloan and his older brother Maddox were playing in the hole when the ground gave way, and separate audio from the 911 dispatcher who alerted beach officials noted that about 20 bystanders were caught. They rushed to join the efforts to remove the girl. Of the sand.
The person who initially called 911 began by telling the dispatcher that there was “a group of people trying to dig.”
He said he realized something was wrong when he heard “the father screaming for help,” who “said his son was stuck in a hole in the sand.”
“The mother is screaming, ‘my daughter is there,'” he continued. “Everyone is screaming.”
Panic screams and screams can be heard in the background of the audio, and the voice of the woman who called 911 cracked as she warned the dispatcher, “They haven’t gotten the child out yet.”
He said he could not detail the exact situation because “everyone is surrounding” the collapsed hole, but noted that he could not see the young woman’s head above the sand.
“Oh, this mother… oh, this is horrible,” they said at the end of the call, seconds before pain-filled crying could be heard in the background.
Sloan’s older brother, Maddox, was first rescued from the hole and was taken to the hospital in stable condition after also being injured in the collapse.
The siblings, their father and mother Therese, 36, were visiting from Fort Wayne, Indiana, when tragedy struck Tuesday.
The family was visiting from Fort Wayne, Indiana, when the tragedy occurred.
Sloan’s older brother, Maddox, was first rescued from the hole and was taken to the hospital in stable condition after also being injured in the collapse.
The brothers’ parents, Jason and Therese, are pictured above.
Frantic passersby knelt and dug with their hands in a desperate attempt to reach the girl.
Frantic cell phone footage showed a crowd of desperate beachgoers falling to their knees and using their hands to pull children out of the sand.
Some tried to hold the walls to prevent more sand from falling on the children.
Sloan had no pulse when she left the arena and was pronounced dead at the hospital, according to authorities. Her brother Maddox was seen walking outside the hospital on Wednesday.
The young woman’s grieving father, Jason, shared a brief note on the Facebook page of his home improvement business after the tragedy, saying: “Please be patient as we deal with the loss of our daughter.”
He previously told WANE 15 that his daughter was “always smiling” and “full of love and life.”
Tributes have poured in for the seven-year-old, and her school in Indiana, Lafayette Meadows Elementary School, issued a statement Wednesday mourning Sloan.
People have left tributes to the seven-year-old boy on the beach in Fort Lauderdale.
A crowd gathered to help try to get the children out until authorities arrived.
Sloan with her father Jason, who said she was “full of life”
The family is seen on another vacation a few years ago in a photo posted on Facebook.
The statement read: “I write this with a heavy heart to inform you that we have lost a precious member of the Lafayette Meadows school family.”
‘Sloan Mattingly was a bright, sweet, and loving first grader in Mrs. Vanbrocklin’s class. Sloan passed away on Tuesday.
‘We will be speaking to Mrs. Vanbrocklin’s class, as well as Mrs. Kilbourne’s class, since Sloan’s brother is a member of that class, on Thursday.
‘Our administrative team and counselors have support resources available for any student or staff member in need during this time of loss.
‘Please keep the Mattingly family in your thoughts and prayers. They have requested privacy at this time. “We will pass on any additional information the family wishes to share.”
Pompano Beach Fire spokeswoman Sandra King told DailyMail.com on Wednesday that adults who were with the children were too distraught to provide additional details at the scene.
His school in Indiana, Lafayette Meadows Elementary School, issued a statement Wednesday mourning Sloan’s death.
King said the hole was five to six feet deep when it collapsed, leaving the boy buried up to his chest and the girl completely buried beneath him.
Although deaths from sand holes are very rare, they are not unheard of and studies and warnings have been published about them.
Last week on Jersey Shore Beach, a little boy was trapped after a hole he was playing in collapsed and buried him. After the initial panic, the boy’s father was able to save him.
Last May, a 17-year-old boy died in the small resort town of Frisco, on Virginia’s Outer Banks, after becoming trapped in a hole dug in a dune area behind the main beach dune along the Atlantic Ocean. .
The teenager was buried under several feet of sand after an adjacent dune apparently collapsed into the hole.
After his death, an Outer Banks vacation home and property management company Seaside Vacations wrote a blog after a fatal sand collapse in the area about the dangers of digging holes on the beach.
They said: ‘Sand is, by nature, structurally unstable. Beach erosion, storms and sand mining can weaken the area, which could cause problems even after the hole has been refilled.’
They recommended never digging deeper than knee height, especially in an area with dunes.
