An Ingram man searching flood-ravaged banks says a mysterious scream led him to a young girl’s body, bringing a grieving family closure.
‘She looked like she was dancing:’ Ingram man guided by scream to girl lost in Texas Hill Country flood Read full article: ‘She looked like she was dancing:’ Ingram man guided by scream to girl lost in Texas Hill Country flood– In the wake of devastating flooding along the Guadalupe River , more than a thousand search-and-rescue workers have been combing through multiple Hill Country towns in search of missing victims.
For some residents, the official response wasn’t fast enough, and they took it upon themselves to help find their neighbors. One of those locals is Ashton Bolton, who grew up along the Guadalupe and knows its banks as well as anyone.Days after the wall of water tore through the region, destroying homes and RVs and sweeping away neighbors, Bolton says he set out to find survivors or at least bring closure to families.The sound cut through the rush of the river and the snap of branches as he walked along the banks of the Guadalupe River. “You know when you’re in a very quiet room, it sounds like a vacuum? That’s how it sounded,” he said. Bolton said the flood’s aftermath in his hometown was “crushing.” Still, he and a few friends walked miles along the riverbanks, searching.On the day after the flood, he ventured out near his home. “It was so quiet, it was loud, you know what I mean? But I was in the water, I was hearing the water, but I know I heard her,” he said. “Not just once, two or three times.” ‘Come with your wallets open:’ A month after Texas Hill Country flood, small communities feeling economic burden “I said, ‘Man, I don’t know if I’m hallucinating, man. I swear I hear this little girl.’ It’s a girl scream. It’s not a boy scream, it’s a girl’s scream. Just loud and high-pitched,” he said.“I went between underneath this tree and this little thicket, and right as I turned my head left. Looking west upstream, and there she was,” Bolton said. “She was just bruised up and scraped up a little bit. She was cold. She was COLD. Her lips were swollen purple. I got home that night and taking a warm frickin’ shower. Really? I’m fortunate enough to take a warm shower.” The girl, no older than 10, was lifeless. She had ended up on a small raised patch of dry ground in the middle of the river. “But I like to tell myself the way that she was laying, she looked like she was dancing. Like she was happy to go to the Lord. Like she was happy,” Bolton said.“Once the deputies came, he said, we’re gonna need a kayak. Well, I know there’s one upstream. So I had to cross back over in water up to my chest,” Bolton said.“Had to lay her body on a kayak. And put her back in the river and just float her across. And take her out of the kayak and put her in a body bag,” he said.“Let’s keep going, Mystic is right there,” he said. In the days that followed, Bolton and his friends searched for personal belongings along the river, items they hoped could be returned to families. “Allie, Allie W, I don’t know her last name, I found her a little blue backpack with her pink brush in it and her bug bite and her lotion,” he said. “I wasn’t going to lay them back down in the river bed, back in the mud. Any piece of clothing we saw because they all had tags on them and I don’t know if they’re machine washable but they all have little cute little stickers on them like little rainbows or something little girls.”“Lauren’s picking up these cute little dresses, man. Cute little tiny dresses,” he said.“It’s my job in my home, my hometown, my backyard. I’m responsible for these little girls. I need to find them. I need take care of them like they’re my own,” he said.Gage Goulding is an award-winning TV news reporter and anchor. A native of Pittsburgh, PA, he comes to Texas from Fort Myers, FL, where he covered some of the areas most important stories, including Hurricane Ian.
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