A 10-year-old girl's body was pulled from the Passaic River in northern New Jersey on Friday, two days after she disappeared while swimming, the second child to die in the same stretch of water that afternoon.
Passaic Mayor Hector Lora announced the recovery after a couple in a nearby building spotted something in the river and dialed 911. Divers responded and brought the girl's body to the surface, ending a search that had stretched across two days and been slowed by darkness and storm-swollen currents.
The girl was one of three children, two of them siblings, who entered the water near Pulaski Park in the city of Passaic on Wednesday. A 10-year-old boy, the brother of an 11-year-old girl in the group, was found dead about three hours after the children went in. Rescuers pulled his body from the river roughly 50 feet from the spot where he had entered, the New York Post reported.
The boy reportedly drowned trying to save his sister, who had been struggling to stay afloat. The 11-year-old managed to clamber out of the water on her own and was reunited with her parents. The 10-year-old girl, a friend of the siblings, did not resurface.
An unidentified bystander attempted to rescue the two drowning children but could not reach them. The river's currents, amplified by recent storms, overpowered the would-be rescuer. Authorities have not released the Good Samaritan's name.
The Passaic Fire Department led the search operation. The Passaic County Sheriff's Office deployed boats and scuba dive teams to assist. High water levels and poor visibility after dark complicated the effort Wednesday night and into Thursday, leaving the girl's family waiting for word that would not come until Friday.
Tragedies involving children near water have drawn renewed attention in recent weeks. In Texas, a 15-year-old drowned in a flooded retention pond as tropical weather swept the Gulf Coast, another reminder of how quickly rising water can turn fatal for young people.
Lora posted a statement on social media after the girl's body was found. He did not identify either child by name, and authorities have withheld the identities of all three children involved.
The mayor wrote:
"I ask that you continue to pray for the families and to hold them up in your thoughts because they are in need of your support."
No official cause-of-death determination from a medical examiner had been announced at the time of the mayor's statement. Authorities have not said whether any investigation has been opened into the circumstances that led the children into the river, or whether any charges are under consideration.
The identities of the children, their precise relationship beyond friendship, and the specific storms responsible for the elevated water levels all remain undisclosed. Cases involving the recovery of young people's remains carry a particular weight for communities left searching for answers long after the initial emergency passes.
What began Wednesday as three children near a public park ended with two dead and one survivor. The 10-year-old boy gave his life trying to pull his sister from the current. The 11-year-old girl survived. Their friend did not.
The boy was found 50 feet from where he went in, close enough to shore that the distance itself underscores how dangerous even shallow-looking urban waterways become after heavy rain. The girl's body drifted farther and eluded searchers for two full days.
Families across the country have faced similar agonizing waits when children go missing near water. In one recent case, an Indianapolis family searched desperately for a mother feared dead abroad while also trying to locate seven missing children, a different set of facts but the same hollow dread of not knowing.
Passaic sits along one of New Jersey's most heavily trafficked rivers. The Passaic River runs through densely populated stretches of the northern part of the state, and parks along its banks draw families in warm weather. But the river is not a swimming pool. Its currents shift with rainfall, its depth is uneven, and storm runoff can turn a calm stretch into a channel strong enough to sweep an adult off his feet, let alone a child.
When tragedies involving children occur, communities rightly ask what safeguards existed and whether they were enough. The broader question of how cities protect young people from preventable harm never gets easier, and the answers rarely arrive fast enough for the families left behind.
No barriers, warning signs, or swim restrictions at the park near the drowning site have been mentioned by officials. Whether those existed, or should have, is a question Passaic's leaders will have to face now that two children are dead.
A 10-year-old boy tried to save his sister and drowned doing it. His friend vanished beneath the same water and was not seen again for two days. If that does not force a hard look at what safeguards were in place along that riverbank, nothing will.
