‘Overprotective’ parents of girl who suffocated in Fla. sand hole say danger ‘never crossed their mind’
The grieving parents of Sloan Mattingly, the 7-year-old girl who died when a massive sand hole collapsed on her, said they were known for being “overprotective” — and “never, ever once” imagined her facing such a horrifying danger.
Mom Therese Mattingly told “Good Morning America” that she still has “no idea” how the tragedy — in which their 9-year-old son was also buried, but then pulled out alive — suddenly unfolded before their eyes on what until then had been a “perfect” day last month on a Florida beach.
“We’re the people that other parents or family members kind of roll their eyes at because we’re a little overprotective most of the time and think of everything,” she said.
“When we go to the beach, we think of water safety,”‘ she said.
“And this never, ever once crossed my mind.”
Speaking from their Fort Wayne, Indiana home, the parents said the hole caved in on itself so abruptly they couldn’t do much to help despite being mere feet away.
“It’s kind of a blur, and it’s probably maybe in my mind protecting itself, but it just happened so fast,” recalled Slaon’s dad, Jason, who managed to pull his son to safety while desperately trying to rescue his daughter as other beachgoers raced in to help.
“And in my mind I had her in my hands, but the weight of the sand was too much.”
“It didn’t matter that we were literally right there,” Therese added. “It was just a hole. And there’s nothing.”
It took rescuers 20 minutes to pull Sloan out, but by the time she got to the hospital, it was too late.
“Everyone tried their hardest. And unfortunately, it didn’t work out in our favor,” her father Jason told “GMA.”
The grieving parents remembered their daughter, a first-grader who loved Taylor Swift and making friendship bracelets for her loved ones, as “a beam of light,” and pure “joy.”
“She would come out in the morning and she would fist pump you right out of bed,” Therese said, adding that she and her brother were “built-in best friends.”
With Maddox now an only child “all of a sudden,” his mother says they’re doing everything possible to help him grieve and adjust.
“I think he’s holding a lot in,” she said when asked how he is doing. “There’s a lot of things we have in motion to help him with that and to help us help him.”
“I think he’ll always be a little different now, but we’re willing to do whatever we need to do to make sure he has the help to kind of process this and move forward with Sloan in his heart,” Jason added.
The family hopes that by speaking out about what happened to Sloan they can hopefully prevent something similar happening to another family.
“I don’t know what steps to take in order for that to happen — for, you know, signage or lifeguards or patrol,” Therese said. “But hopefully we can make some sort of change from this.”
There were 52 instances in which people became buried in holes due to collapsed sand — with 31 of them dying from 1997 to 2007, according to a New England Journal of Medicine report.
The victims ranged in age from 3 to 21 years.
