Harvey Flooding Horror: Rescuers Find Shivering Toddler Clinging to Drowned Mother, Colette Sulcer

Eric Chaney
Published: August 30,2017
A Texas toddler is stable condition after her mother sacrificed her life to keep her child from harm.
Colette Sulcer, 41, died Tuesday after leaving her car that stalled in floodwaters. Both she and her daughter were swept away, the Beaumont Police Department said in a statement.

Collette Sulcer drowned after being swept away by floodwaters, but her 3-year-old daughter was found alive clinging to her mother's body.
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Capt. Brad Penisson of the fire-rescue department in Beaumont told The Associated Press a witness saw Sulcer take her 3-year-old daughter and try to walk to safety when the swift current of a flooded drainage canal next to the parking lot swept them both away.
“They were in the water for quite some time,” BPD Officer Carol Riley told People. “When the baby was found the baby was clinging to her. The mother did the best she could to keep her child up over the water.”
Two Beaumont police officers and two Beaumont Fire Rescue divers in a boat spotted Sulcer floating in the rushing waters with her daughter clinging to her.
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“First responders got to the mother and child just before they went under a trestle,” the Beaumont Police Department said in a statement. “Water was up to the trestle and first responders would not have been able to save the child if they had floated under it.”
Pension told the AP that first responders lifted the child from her mother’s body and tried to revive Sulcer, but she never regained consciousness. The child was taken by ambulance to Christus St. Elizabeth Hospital.
Riley told People that Sulcer “absolutely saved the child’s life. The baby also had a backpack that was helping her float on her back and she was holding on to her mom."
"Mama was saying her prayers" Sulcer's daughter later told a relative while recovering at the hospital, according to NOLA.com.
The child was expected to be released Wednesday. Riley told the AP the girl was doing "very well" and was chatty.
"Everybody at the hospital and the officers just fell in love with her," Riley said.

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