Witness to 2 girls’ drownings in Greenwood: ‘No one yelled out’
LATEST: The two girls who died after being pulled from a Greenwood retention pond have been identified by the Marion County Coroner’s Office as 11-year-old Paw Lin and 13-year-old Rosia Mang. The coroner’s office did not additional information on the cause and manner of the girls’ deaths.
GREENWOOD, Ind. (WISH) — A witness to the drowning of a girl rescued Wednesday night from a retention pond said Thursday she will never look at the pond behind her home in the same way again.
For the past 25 years, Sally Delp and her family have lived in a home with a backyard that overlooks a retention pond. Delp says she had seen the children involved once before in the neighborhood but had never seen them or anyone else in the retention pond until this week.
Delp told News 8 she was reading on her patio Wednesday evening when saw the children walking along the bank behind her home. She says the presence of a taller girl in the group initially made her think it was a group of children with their mother. The group walked around a willow tree on the edge of her property, which kept her from seeing them clearly. Delp says she heard them playing in the water for a while and then it got quiet.
“I thought they had left, and then I saw that there were still shoes there, and I thought they were just being quiet on the other side of the tree,” she said.
Investigators say they believe two preteen girls in the group took a wrong step and went underwater. Firefighters pulled both girls from the water a little after 8 p.m. Wednesday.
Ambulance crews took both girl to Riley Children’s Hospital, where one of them died.
Lt. Angela Goldman of the Indiana Department of Natural Resources’ law enforcement division says debris and sudden drop-offs make retention ponds very dangerous places to swim. Natural Resources is leading the investigation because the incident involves a body of water.
Retention ponds “are what we call an attractive nuisance,” the conservation officer said. “They’re great, they look beautiful but they can be dangerous. That’s one of the biggest dangers of open water, is you can’t see the bottom.”
Natural Resources says retention ponds account for about 7% of drownings in Indiana each year. Drowning victims usually do not thrash about in the water but instead give off more subtle signs, such as being upright underwater or attempting to swim without any coordination.
Delp says, at least from her obstructed view, the group never gave any indication something was wrong.
“No one screamed. No one splashed. No one yelled out,” she said. “There was nothing.”
A long fence separates adjacent backyards, including Delp’s, from the pond. Multiple signs mark the pond as private property and warn passersby not to swim or fish there. Delp says when she stepped onto her patio this morning she did not look at the willow tree the same way she has for the past 25 years. She says she choked up when she recalled seeing firefighters pull the victims out of the water.
“That was really a shock to me,” she said. “I couldn’t believe it because I was sitting here the whole time.”
Authorities have not yet released the name of the girl who died or any update on the second girl rescued from the pond.
Greenwood Community Schools sent messages to families that said one of its middle school students was in the retention pond accident. Grief counselors will be at Greenwood Middle School on Friday morning.