Tonight, a family from Sand Hill Village is grieving for their missing daughter, who is presumed to have drowned yesterday in Isabella Bank Village. The grief is already tough enough to handle, but the desperate search to recover her body is quite another. 7News joined the team this morning on the Belize River and Daniel Ortiz reports:..
Daniel Ortiz reporting
7 Year-old Chelsie Smith went under the water yesterday morning at around 11 and since then divers from the village and from the Coast Guard have been diving the Belize River to recover her body.
But, because of the flood waters from the Tropical Wave which passed over this weekend, the river rose quite substantially between yesterday and today. The divers couldn't locate Chelsie's body today.
Her parents were beside themselves with grief. Chelsie's mother, Pamela Olivera, told police that she took her and her other 4 siblings to a party, at the very Riverside house where she went under.
The children were swimming in the river, and everything was fine. Suddenly, all that changed when Olivera saw her daughter struggling to resurface. Olivera, who was fishing in a canoe, jumped in to try to save her, but the current almost carried her under also.
Olivera did all she could, but she couldn't save her daughter, who wasn't seen again.
Today, we spoke to the Chairman of Isabella Bank, who was at the party and recognized that something went wrong:
Dudley Hendy - Chairman, Isabella Bank Village
"When I came here first a lot of kids were in the water and the lady was out fishing so I went there and told them to get the kids of the water, it isn't the time for kids to be in there because of the rain the water was raising, I told them they had to also look out for crocodile. The lady didn't pay me any attention, she just laughed so I came out and that is when I heard a screaming. So I said something is happening there and they said it was the kids that were making noise, when I turned around I saw Mr. Shedlock Hendy ran from off the step and he took off his shirt and jumped in. I said I knew something happened because he went into the water and I asked and they said the little went down. See what I tell you, I told them to get the kids out of the water and they didn't listen. The lady was out there fishing and I think the kids must have wanted to go around where the mother was and she slipped out."
One mistake was all it took, and now Chelsie Smith's family is left to wait anxiously trying to predict where the divers will find her body.
Dudley Hendy
"Shortly after the kid went down there's a guy Joe Madrid from here in Isabella Bank - him and Shedlock were diving to assist until the Coast Guard got here and they took over when they got here. They searched and didn't find anything."
They didn't find anything yesterday, and nothing today, so the Coast Guard will have to return tomorrow to bring some closure to this tragic episode.
The father of Chelsie Smith is an officer from the Police Prosecution Branch, and the very strict court orderly working out of the Chief Magistrate's Court. He told us today that it is a particularly difficult time for him because he is just recovering from a very difficult surgery, which became life-threatening. He is currently is on sick leave.
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