911 calls show distraught scene of girl trapped in sand on beach | Listen
The beach in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea behind the High Noon Beach Resort turned into a distraught scene of screams and beachgoers digging in the sand Tuesday afternoon, trying to rescue a pair of siblings who were buried inside a deep hole after it collapsed on them, killing a 7-year-old girl from Indiana.
One woman who called 911 told the operator she was in the water with her grandchildren when she heard the screaming. Another woman said all she could see was people surrounding the hole and heard the girl’s parents shouting for help.
The Broward Sheriff’s Office on Wednesday afternoon released three of five 911 calls made shortly after 3 p.m. Tuesday, asking for help to come to 4424 El Mar Drive. It appeared those who called 911 only mentioned the young girl being buried, though her 9-year-old brother was also buried up to his chest, officials said.
The siblings were identified Wednesday as Sloan Mattingly and her brother Maddox. Sloan was pronounced dead at Broward Health Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale after she was pulled from the five-to-six-feet deep hole without a pulse.
A woman in one of the three 911 calls told the operator with a shaky voice that people were trying to dig a child out of the sand directly behind High Noon Resort. Screaming could be heard in the background. The woman said the father yelled for help and the mother shouted that her daughter was in the hole.
“Everybody’s screaming,” the woman said in the call. Voices could be made out shouting a few words in the background — “my son” and “she’s under” were heard.
“What part of the body is trapped?” the operator asked the woman.
“I can’t see. There’s so many people,” she said.
The operator asked if anyone was obviously injured.
“They have not gotten the child out,” the caller responded. “They’re digging.”
All she could see was people surrounding the hole, she told the operator. The operator asked if anyone else was injured, and the woman said she believed it was only one child.
Sandra King, a spokesperson for Pompano Beach Fire Rescue, told the South Florida Sun Sentinel on Tuesday that the little boy was buried up to his chest while the girl was completely buried underneath him. The boy’s parents put him in a Broward Sheriff’s Office car, and he was taken to the hospital and was in stable condition, King said.
Girl dies after hole dug in sand collapses on South Florida beach
“Is the child’s head above the sand?” the 911 operator asked. The female caller asked someone in the background for the answer.
“No, they do not see her head,” she told the operator. The shouting in the background continued as the woman told the operator that two officers arrived and were going toward the hole.
Another woman who called 911 told the operator she stayed back from the hole as her husband joined the group of men trying to dig out the girl.
“Something’s wrong on the beach. I think somebody fell in to the sand and a bunch of men are trying to dig somebody out,” the woman told the operator, sounding breathless.
She sounded on the verge of tears as she gave the operator the resort’s address. She shouted to people in the background of the call when the operator asked her what happened, and another woman grabbed the phone.
“Hi, there was a little girl buried under the sand, and they have not gotten to her yet,” the woman said.
She again described the people circling the hole, trying to dig. More shouting could be heard in the background.
The third woman to call 911 who was at the beach with her grandchildren said the hole was near the water.
“Oh my god, they’re still digging and yelling!” she told the operator. “Oh my god!” She told the children she was with to turn around.
“There’s a little girl in there. They had a big hole and it collapsed,” she told someone in the background.
The operator told the woman to stay on the line and keep updating him.
“They’re still digging. They can’t find her!” she said. More frantic shouting in the background filled the seconds of silence.
She was on the phone with the operator for nearly six minutes, and the beachgoers were digging the whole time, according to the call.
Once someone is trapped under the sand, they typically have only between 3 and 5 minutes to live, experts say, the amount of time someone can hold their breath.
King told the Sun Sentinel on Tuesday that she did not know how long the children were trapped before they were rescued. The Sheriff’s Office did not identify the children’s parents or provide an update on Maddox’s condition Wednesday.
Sun Sentinel staff writer Shira Moolten contributed to this report.