9 family member killed at popular tourist destination

Last Thursday a duck boat capsized at a tourist destination on Missouri. Seventeen people are said to have died from the incident.

According to People, nine of the people who died belonged to the same family. The youngest person who passed away was only 1 year old.

Seventeen people were killed on Thursday after a duck boat capsized on Missouri’s Table Rock Lake. Several others were injured after the Ride the Ducks boat capsized as a thunderstorm ravaged the water.

Nine members of one family are among the dead. According to a spokesperson for Governor Mike Parson, two members of the family survived.

For more on this story go to our Twitter account @amomama_usa. The victims’ names are yet to be released by officials.

A spokeswoman for the Stone County Sheriff’s Office said the youngest victim was 1 year old and the oldest was 70. Thirty-one people were on the vessel at the time of the incident.

Trent Behr, 20, witnessed the accident from a nearby boat. He said there was chaos the moment witnesses realized what had happened.

“Our captain yelled, ‘The boat tipped over! The boat’s in the water.’ Then all of a sudden, the staff on our boat just dropped what they were doing and grabbed life vests. They went to try to save as many people as they could find.’”

Trent Behr, People, July 20, 2018

Behr and his girlfriend, Allison Lester, 20, had just arrived in Springfield, Missouri, from Sioux City, Iowa, on Wednesday. The following day they boarded the Branson boat trip at around 7 p.m.

They hadn’t left the dock when the nearby boat capsized. Behr said he and Lester jumped in to try and help anywhere they could.

“We decided, ‘We just can’t sit here. We need to do something,’” Behr explained. He shared that they saw a green purse float by the front of their boat then they saw a woman who was in the water with her face down, unconscious.

They made the decision to help when they saw the woman float by. Behr, Lester and two others pulled the woman, who looked to be in her late 30s, from the water.

They pulled her onto the boat and realized that she looked to be around seven months pregnant. As Behr prepared to perform CPR on her, an EMT official took over and ordered him and the group away.

“It was surreal and we were at a loss for words,” Lester shared moments after they left the scene. “We were sick to our stomachs at what we had witnessed. My feelings were all over the place. These are people on vacation, just like we are,” she added.

Lester stated that they didn’t know whether the woman they saved survived the incident. Authorities said they believed the boat turned over and sunk due to the stormy weather at about 8 p.m. ET.

Thunderstorm winds were as high as 60 mph, according to NBC News, and the duck boat remains at the bottom of the lake. In a statement, the Ride The Ducks Branson boating company said they were deeply saddened by the tragic accident.

They added that the incident had deeply affected all of them. 'Words cannot convey how profoundly our hearts are breaking. We will continue to do all we can to assist the families who were involved,’ the statement read.