A scary 911 call from the beach after a 7-year-old girl was found buried alive in Florida: “Oh, this mom”
Heartbreaking audio has been released of a beachgoer calling 911 right after 7-year-old Sloan Mattingly was found dead buried in a hole on a Florida beach. The girl’s terrified mother can be heard yelling desperately to get her daughter out.
The woman who calls 911 tells the operator, “I’m on the beach in front of High Noon, and there’s a child that they’re trying to get out.” This was released by NBC 6 South Florida on Wednesday.
It starts with the caller saying that “a bunch of people were trying to dig.” Then, the caller says that she heard the girl’s father “yelling for help” and that his daughter was “caught in a hole in the sand.”
She said, “The mom is yelling, ‘My daughter is in there!'”
“Everyone’s screaming,” the woman says, and during the 911 call, she can hear other people screaming in pain as they desperately try to save the girl.
The operator tells the woman that emergency workers have been sent to the beach, but a person on the beach then says that the people who are helping still “have not gotten the child out” and are “digging.”
What part of the child’s body is stuck? When 911 asks, the caller says the girl’s “whole body” is still under the sand.
The operator asks her if “the child’s head is above the sand,” but she says, “They do not see her head,” as Sloan is still being dug out quickly.
After that, the caller said that the sheriff had arrived and that the people who were helping were now waiting for a fire crew to arrive.
The woman says, “They need help.” “Yes, they do.”
As the operator keeps trying to ask the woman about what’s going on at the scene, the girl’s mother’s sobs start to totally take her attention.
“Oh, this mom…” “This is terrible,” she says.
When the dispatcher asks if the “officer is with the child,” there is a broken scream in the background. The woman somberly answers, “Yes,” and the call ends.
After being buried in the sand for about 20 minutes, Sloan would be declared dead.
Early Tuesday afternoon, tragedy struck at Lauderdale-by-the-Sea in Fort Lauderdale. The girl and her family were on vacation from Fort Wayne, Indiana.
The sand fell on her and her 9-year-old brother Maddox Mattingly as they were digging a hole.
As the sand poured into the 5- to 6-foot-deep hole, it buried the girl completely. Her brother was buried up to his chest.
Maddox’s father, Jason Mattingly, pulled him out, and he lived through it.
Both kids were taken to Broward Health Medical Center in Fort Lauderdale, but Sloan was already dead when they got there.
Upsetting cellphone footage showed people on the beach and rescuers using their hands and anything else they could find to dig the girl out.
Support boards helped the rescuers dig without letting sand fall back into the hole.
“It was an unbelievable accident,” said Sandra King, a spokeswoman for Pompano Beach Fire Rescue, after the girl’s death.