Mom drowns trying to save daughter in river just before Mother’s Day
A mom trying to rescue her daughter in a river drowned three days before Mother’s Day.
Brenda Duran, 30, was watching her kids play in the San Joaquin River at Fishermen’s Bend near Crows Landing in California around 6.30pm on Thursday.
‘When her eleven-year-old daughter began having difficulties keeping her head above the water, Duran jumped into the river to help her,’ wrote the Stanislaus County Sheriff’s Office on Facebook.
‘While attempting to help her daughter, Duran also struggled to stay afloat.’
Duran’s 14-year-old son then jumped into the river to try to help them both.
Her daughter and son managed to get out of the river, but their mother was swept away.
Deputies arrived at the scene after receiving a 911 call and first responders tended to the children.
Multiple law enforcement units engaged in a search and rescue mission for Duran that ran until around 11pm until it was ‘paused due to visibility and safety concerns’, according to the sheriff’s office.
Patrol units remained on site overnight and the sheriff office’s dive team searched for the mother early Friday morning.
On Saturday around 5.30pm, hours before Mother’s Day, search effort volunteers found Duran’s body in the river near Newman, said the sheriff’s office in an update that night.
An autopsy was set to be conducted later in the week to determine Duran’s cause of death.
‘We extend our deepest condolences to the family and friends of Brenda Duran during this time,’ wrote the sheriff’s office on Saturday.
Duran, ‘a young mother full of love and laughter leaves behind her three children, her husband and her extended family that will forever hold her in her heart’, states a GoFundMe page for her funeral expenses.
It had raised more than $9,000 as of Wednesday afternoon.
Duran died about nine months after a mother-of-four hiking with her family at Franconia Falls in New Hampshire drowned while trying to save her 10-year-old son who slipped and fell into a pool at the waterfall.
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