terracotta
Active Member
- Joined
- Jan 16, 2011
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I'd normally agree, but I keep going back to the satellite view and Terracotta's post about what she learned from family members. I guess I need clarification. If they were at the water's edge near the bridge, and she climbed the stairs to get up onto the wall, then this was not a "My back was turned for five seconds!" situation. She was out of reach of those children for quite some time. She may have had her eye on them most of that time, but from the pictures it looks like she was a couple hundred yards away. Or am I looking at the wrong stairs? If not, there's no way she could have helped those kids even if her eyes never left them. I'm sure I make stupid decisions from time to time, but living around water makes you MORE respectful of it, not less. Try living in Florida and not being inundated with drowning stories, water accidents, missing boaters, and statistics about how drowning is the most common cause of death in kids under five. Stats don't paint a colorful picture, but when you live across the street from the water like we do, we take zero chances.
So, I don't know if I can grasp the "They are comfortable around the water so she was lackadaisical" theory. Listen to those waves. How?
You are right MomofBoys, the mom had her eye on them and was talking to them as she climbed the stairs and was walking on the retaining wall walkway, but she was not close to them to help if something suddenly happened. It does not seem likely that the girls went back over the bridge as the mom was just above them on the wall. Then she went into the yard. The girls were about 20 feet from the estuary and 10 feet from the ocean line coming in with waves. If Caleigh walked towards the estuary the banks of it would crumble under foot if she stood on its edge.
I was there when the family was timing out how long it would take someone to get to either the parking lot across the bridge or the street parking around the retaining wall. It definitely would have been less than 30 seconds to get the girl and run to a car on the road, but that means they would have had to be waiting for a moment that mom was completely out of sight. Who would think that would happen....maybe just an opportunity that presented itself to someone...I don't know.
The mom wasn't there yesterday. I believe that she is a mess, as expected, and is likely on some sedatives from what I extracted from the conversation.
Something that also bothers me is that she said she was gone two minutes from the girls....does that two minutes include the time she is walking up the stairs and walkway? If that is so then they only would have been out of her sight for 10 or 20 seconds...then she gets the ball and is back on the walkway and can see them....and of course when that happened and she came back to the walkway Caleigh was gone. But the mom had parked down on that road and I thought, well maybe she ran to the car for something while she was getting the ball. That would take a couple minutes. Doing that the kids would not see mom and maybe got up to go look to see where she is...and then Caleigh could have slipped into the water. It was an hour into the tide going out so water levels were higher in the estuary...and it was rough waves so it could have been seconds that she taken into the sea.
I can imagine the mother is racked with immense guilt for whatever actually happened that day.