Eyewitnesses to boating tragedy at Lake Ray Hubbard share harrowing accounts: "The screams were just horrible"
LAKE RAY HUBBARD – Lee Shellenberger and his fiancée, Colleen Martin, are still trying to navigate what they saw Thursday on Lake Ray Hubbard.
The couple said they were celebrating the Fourth of July with friends when tragedy struck.
"It was very confusing at first because when I saw the boat go down and I saw the people fly off the back, I knew something was wrong," Martin said. "And then I heard the screams, but my mind was trying to process how severe it was."
Martin, a realtor, said she and her friends saw the group on the boat back on shore. From what they could see, the couple said the people looked to be having fun without alcoholic beverages. Then, the piercing screams of distress and the desperation to stay afloat as possibly 8-10 people struggled in the water. She recalled seeing someone reaching to pull themselves up from the water and back onto the vessel.
"It was terrible. It was just ... I was sitting here watching them have fun. And then in the very next minute, it was just ... they were gone," Martin said. "So it's just horrifying. I'll never forget the screams."
Her fiance and his friend jumped into the lake to rescue whoever they could. Shellenberger found a woman making every effort to stay above water.
"You could see the terror in her eyes. She had a float, but she didn't even want to hold on to it," Shellenberger said. "She said 'I cant hold on any longer.' She said 'I can't swim, I'm too tired.' So I grabbed the float and told her I'd do the swimming and told her to hold on."
He said the woman got into their boat. By then, the emergency crews had started to make the scene. Shellenberger said he did not get to ask the woman how the incident happened.
Dallas Fire and Rescue responded to the lake for a report of people jumping from a boat in the Windsurf Bay Park area. They searched the area Thursday night for two missing people.
"We were all standing on the boat. We were pointing in the water, and the police boat came up to us with like, 'Where did they go down? Where do they go down?' We were doing our best. 'It's right here, it's right here,'" Martin said.
Rescue crews recovered two bodies Friday morning. The identities have not been released pending family notification. Shellenberger said during the grassroots rescue, his friend saved the wife of one of the deceased.
"The screams were just horrible," he said. "And they said there were other people, but we were never even able to see them. We never even saw the guys that went down."
Martin said it was hard to watch the fireworks display at the lake. Sleeping throughout the night was turbulent, too. The scene kept playing out in her head, especially the dire screams.
"And I don't know that they ever expected or anticipated that they would be thrown into the water," she said.
Martin said it reemphasized the need to wear a life jacket on the waterways. Shellenberger called it a simple step to prevent something that did not have to happen.
Authorities haven't said if someone could face criminal responsibility for the two deaths. Martin said the boat made a weird circle, cut off, and floated away.