Heart-wrenching 911 call reveals panic at beach after 7-year-old girl was buried alive at Florida beach: ‘Oh this mother’
Heart-wrenching audio has been released of a frantic beachgoer calling 911 moments after 7-year-old Sloan Mattingly was fatally buried inside a hole on a Florida beach, as the girl’s panic-stricken mother can be heard desperately screaming to get her daughter out.
“I’m on the beach in front of High Noon, and there’s a child that they’re trying to get out,” the woman caller tells the 911 operator in audio released by NBC 6 South Florida Wednesday.
The call explains that a “bunch of people [were] trying to dig” before telling the operator that she heard the girl’s father “yelling for help” and that his daughter was “caught in a hole in the sand.”
“The mom’s yelling, ‘my daughter is in there,’” she said.
“Everybody’s screaming,” the woman says as distraught shouting from others can be heard as they desperately try to rescue the girl throughout the duration of the 911 call.
The operator tells the woman that emergency responders have been dispatched to the beach before the beachgoer reveals those helping still “have not gotten the child out” and that they’re still “digging.”
911 asks the caller what part of the child’s body is trapped and is told the “whole body” of the girl is still under the sand.
She’s asked by the operator if “the child’s head is above the sand” but responds that “they do not see her head” as others frantically continue to get Sloan dug out.
The caller then said the sheriff had arrived, as those helping were waiting for a fire crew to assist them.
“They need help,” the woman says. “They really do.”
As the operator continues to try and ask the woman questions about what’s happening on the scene, she becomes heartbrokenly entranced by the wails of the girl’s mother.
“Oh, this mother… oh, this is awful,” she says.
The dispatcher asks if the “officer is with the child,” only to be met by a shattered scream in the background, with the woman somberly replying, “Yes,” as the call ends.
Sloan would be pronounced dead after being submerged in the sand for roughly 20 minutes.
The young girl and her family were visiting Lauderdale-by-the-Sea in Fort Lauderdale on vacation from Fort Wayne, Indiana when tragedy struck at around 3 p.m. Tuesday.
She had been digging a hole with her brother Maddox Mattingly, 9, when the sand caved in on them.
The weight of the sand pouring into the 5-to-6-foot-deep hole completely buried the girl while her brother was buried up to his chest.
Maddox was pulled out by his father, Jason Mattingly, and survived the ordeal.
Both children were rushed to Broward Health Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale, where Sloan was pronounced dead.
Distressing cellphone footage captured the moment desperate beachgoers and rescuers were seen using their hands and whatever they could grab to dig the girl out.
Rescuers used support boards to keep sand from falling back into the hole as they dug.
“It was an unfathomable accident,” Pompano Beach Fire Rescue spokeswoman Sandra King said following the girl’s tragic death.
The incident remains under investigation, according to police.
