7-Year-Old Killed In Sand Collapse At FL Beach Identified: Reports

FORT LAUDERDALE, FL — The 7-year-old girl who died Tuesday on a Florida beach after a hole she and her brother were digging collapsed on them has been identified, the South Florida Sun Sentinel reported Wednesday.

Authorities identified the young girl as Sloan Mattingly, the outlet reported, adding Mattingly and her family were visiting Florida from Indiana.

Emergency crews responded around 3 p.m. to El Mar Drive in Lauderdale-by-the-Sea, where they first found the 9-year-old boy buried up his chest in sand, Sandra King, a spokesperson for Pompano Beach Fire Rescue, said. The boy's condition was unknown Thursday.

Mattingly was completely buried underneath the boy, King told the South Florida Sun-Sentinel in a past article. After finding no pulse, first responders took her to a hospital, where she was later pronounced dead, according to reports.

RELATED: Little Girl Killed After Hole She Dug On FL Beach Collapsed

There were no lifeguards at the beach at the time, The Associated Press reported.

“It was a horrible, horrible scene," King said in The Associated Press report. "Just imagine one minute your children are playing in the sand and then in seconds you have a life-threatening situation with your little girl buried."

The hole was 5 or 6 feet deep when the collapse happened, she said.

Experts told the Sun-Sentinel that having lifeguards at the beach may have prevented Mattingly's death. The Sentinel spoke with Jim McCrady, vice president and lifesaving academies director of the U.S. Lifesaving Association Southeast Region and a surf rescue chief in Hallandale Beach.

“This doesn’t happen on guarded beaches,”McCrady told the Sun-Sentinel. “We do that all day long. We spot hazards and then we mitigate the dangers involved in those hazards. This is a daily thing that happens on a guarded beach, when someone starts to dig hole."

Deaths resulting from sand collapses are common nationwide, The Associated Press reported, citing news reports and a 2007 medical study.

The outlet reported about three to five children are killed nationwide annually when a sand hole collapses on them. Some people become seriously injured after such a collapse.

“The risk of this event is enormously deceptive because of its association with relaxed recreational settings not generally regarded as hazardous,” the New England Journal of Medicine study concluded, per The Associated Press.

Read more via The Associated Press and the South Florida Sun-Sentinel.