HAULOVER BEACH, FLA. (WSVN) - Two victims have been transported to the hospital after a drowning incident at Haulover Beach, but one would not make it.
Miami-Dade Fire Rescue crews responded to the scene just west of the Haulover sandbar at around 2:17 p.m., Monday.
Witnesses said a group of women began screaming for help because a man was about 10 feet underwater and unresponsive, and they said he couldn’t swim.
The man was transported to Aventura Hospital, where he was pronounced dead.
Andrea Gaybor relived the dramatic moment when a day on the water turned deadly.
“It happened so quick,” she said.
Gaybor says their group of six had been in the water at the Haulover sandbar for about an hour Monday afternoon when the current picked up around 2:15 p.m.
“We were just fine. The water was really shallow. It was like here, so out of nothing it started pulling us more out,” she said.
The fast-moving current carried them away from the sandbar. Gaybor said one of the guys in their group, who she called Mel, couldn’t swim and began drowning in the deep water.
The others struggled to get to safety and screamed for help.
“I don’t know, some guy pulled me by the arm and pulled me back on the boat, and then I was standing there screaming for help because I couldn’t see Mel. He was under the water,” Gaybor said.
Two strangers turned Good Samaritans, Walton Goncalves and Mario Solis, said they attempted to save that man’s life.
Goncalves said he was a few feet away from the water when he heard the screams. He swam over, located the unconscious victim at the bottom of the water and brought him up to shore.
“I’m a pretty good swimmer, so I figured, ‘Let me swim over to see what’s going on,’ and then the lady started yelling, ‘We’re missing one guy! He’s down there, and he does not know how to swim!'” said Goncalves. “So, that’s when we started looking, and like I said, the water’s clean so we could see him from the top. We found him, swam down and brought him up. At this time, he was already laying flat on the bottom, so I swam him back up to the surface and more people joined, and we swam him back to the sandbar to start administering CPR. We were able to keep his head above the water the whole time.”
Solis, who happens to be a critical care nurse, was there to grab the man’s head and get him into the rescue boat to administer CPR, as they raced back to shore.
“First thing is to try to get the water out, do CPR, keep the blood pumping. We didn’t feel a pulse, but he had to have been underwater for a couple of minutes, plus the time it took for us to be able to get him on the boat, so more than a couple minutes had gone by already,” said Solis.
The other man was transported to the hospital in stable condition.
Officials didn’t say much about what led to the drowning other than it appeared the two men were out in the sandbar when they were pulled away by the current.
Hours later, Miami-Dade Crime Scene investigators were seen at Haulover Marina taking pictures of the boat as the sun went down while police began piecing together the tragic details of the drowning.
“I met him just yesterday, but that little bit that we talked when we were in the water, he was telling me stories that he doesn’t know how to swim, and he was just talking about that before that happened,” Gaybor said.
“When they pulled him up, I’m just hoping that we find him,” Goncalves said.
Three women were evaluated by EMTs, but they were not taken to the hospital.
Their relationship with the victim is unknown.
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