Police have confirmed the identities of two young siblings, aged six and 12, whose lifeless bodies were discovered in the San Jacinto River in Texas.
On the evening of Saturday, July 15, Harris County law enforcement responded to a frantic call. The caller reported that the children, Jeffrey and Ashlyn Guzman Miranda, who had been swimming in the river near the Xtreme Off-Road Park & Beach, had gone under and failed to resurface. Despite the swift arrival of a marine unit and multiple other departments for a search and rescue mission, the youngsters could not be saved.
Sheriff Ed Gonzalez publicly shared the heartbreaking news that the bodies of both children were recovered after midnight. Meanwhile, representatives from the Xtreme Off-Road Park and Beach clarified that the drownings happened near a marina, not within their facility’s boundaries.
According to Eder Guzman, the children’s father, he turned away for a moment to pack up their belongings, and the children went into the water and disappeared. The Guzman family is now creating a GoFundMe to send the bodies back to Guatemala, their native land.
Furthering the weekend’s tragedies, authorities also retrieved the body of another missing swimmer from the San Jacinto River on Sunday, July 16. To avoid any more such incidents, they used their Twitter account to warn the public about the river’s potential safety risks, encouraging everyone to exercise caution and adhere to standard water safety protocols.