Brenda Duran, 30, died Thursday after jumping into the San Joaquin River in Northern California to save her daughter from drowning, police said.
A mother drowned last week after jumping into a California river trying to rescue her 11-year-old daughter who was struggling in the water, authorities said.
Brenda Duran, 30, died Thursday after jumping into the San Joaquin River in Northern California to save her daughter from drowning, police said.
On Saturday, her body was discovered, CBS News reported.
The family was swimming in the lake when her daughter got caught in the water. Duran and her 14-year-old son jumped in to help but while the children made it out, their mother did not, Stanislaus County Sheriff's Office reported.
News of the incident was posted by Stanislaus County Sheriff's Office on their Facebook page.
Authorities said “two juveniles were immediately given medical attention by ambulance personnel at the scene.”
Now, the family is grieving for the loss of the matriarch.
Family member Felicia Guzman, who was with Brenda and her children that afternoon, told CBS News, “[Brenda] just looked at me with a scared look, went under and never came back up.”
Brenda’s 14-year-old son, Jaime Aguilar Guzman, who jumped in to the water to save his sister with his mom, told CBS News, “I realized she was fainted, I jumped into the river, I swam to the middle, I grabbed her and I came out by the time I saw that I looked for my mom to save her and she was already under the water.”
The Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Department said the particular area of the river where Brenda’s body was found hadn’t been search yet due to order of protocol and had nothing to do with their training.
“The divers were told, ‘Hey, this grid hasn’t been searched. You guys can help us start searching this grid.’ And that’s where she happened to be at. So, it has nothing to do with training, and — for lack of a better word — it has a lot to do with luck,” Sgt. Veronica Esquivez with the sheriff’s department told AZ Family.
Her brother, Jorge Duran, told AZ Family that his sister “was always a hardworking mother. She basically gave everything for her kids, even her life.”
