All 5 victims in mass drowning on Ohio river identified by officials
The five victims in a mass drowning in an Ohio river that orphaned two young children included two married couples and a teenager, according to officials.
The tragedy unfolded after one of the adults started struggling in deep water in the Scioto River and the others went in to try to rescue their friend, authorities said. Two women and three men died, as the two children were left on shore. The victims included two married couples from Honduras, according to Honduran officials.
The Delaware County Sheriff's Office identified all five victims on Thursday. They included Marina Suyapa Regalado Miranda, 29, and her husband, Jose Mario Pineda Diaz, 33. Carmen Idalia Ferrera Lara, 30, and her husband, Miguel Angel Guerra Ruiz, 34, also died.
The fifth, and youngest, victim was 18-year-old Jonathan Gabriel Vargas, according to the sheriff's office.
All five victims lived in Columbus, the sheriff's office said.
The Honduran foreign ministry said its office is cooperating with U.S. authorities to repatriate the bodies of the two couples to Honduras and is also supporting the two children.
The group is believed to have been fishing Sunday evening at the Scioto River in Powell, north of Columbus, when at some point one of the adults went in to go swimming, according to Delaware County Sheriff Jeffrey Balzer.
When the person started to struggle, two others went in the river to try to save them, but then they also started to struggle, Balzer said. Two others then went into the water to help, he said, calling the incident a "tragedy."
The incident remains under investigation, the sheriff's office said Thursday.
Two 911 callers reported seeing a child in a towel running along a state highway near the Scioto River, according to audio of the calls obtained by ABC News.
"There was a little baby. I think it was like a boy. ... He was like screaming, like crying -- like, 'Mama, mama!'" one of the people said.
A third person who called 911 said, "We're right here on the riverbank, and we think we see a floating body."
First responders pulled two women from the river Sunday night, Balzer said. They were transported to area hospitals, where they were pronounced dead, he said.
The bodies of three men were recovered from the river on Monday, the sheriff's office said.
Two children under the age of 10 who were with the group have been placed in the care of family services, according to Balzer.
A boater who was in the area where the drowning occurred on Sunday told The Associated Press that he believes he took a photo of the group as they fished in the river.
The man, Baptist pastor Marcus L. Martin, told the AP that he has been taught that that area "was kind of dangerous" due to steep slopes in the river and considered warning the group, but there were several boats between them and he didn't want to cause too many waves.
"I believe the picture I took may have been the last picture of them being alive," he told the AP.
