A witness to the tragic death of a 7-year-old girl who was fatally buried in a sand hole has spoken out and said he wished he had stepped in right away to save her.
Sloan Mattingly, 7, and her brother Maddox got trapped in the sand while playing on a Lauderdale-by-the-Sea beach on Tuesday.
Sadly, the young girl died after the incident while her brother was taken to the hospital.
In an interview with NBC6, Harry Defina said that he saw the children in the sand hole.
“I could see the boy a little bit, but all I can see… I’m not going to be able to finish this…all I could see was the top of the girl’s head,” he said.
“I saw the father was just beside himself. They didn’t dig that hole. It was massive and it ended up being like 18 feet by 6 feet.”
It took 20 minutes before Sloan was finally pulled out but she was pronounced dead at the hospital.
Her heartbroken uncle, Chris Sloan, said that the seven-year-old tried to grab onto her brother’s leg to save herself but eventually Maddox could no longer feel her hand anymore.
He described Sloan as a ‘happy’ girl who ‘had a lot of energy.’
“They were having a good time. They were staying at an Airbnb. Everybody was really excited to actually see them out there,” he went on.
Chris continued: “They don’t really go on vacation much, but they went to Ft. Lauderdale to the beach. They’d been posting pictures the last couple of days they’ve been out there on social media.”
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