Good Samaritan, 22, dies after saving two children from Texas river

The children’s father could not be saved, and his body was recovered on Monday

Cassandra Kendrick and Victor Villanueva were spending time with their respective family on the river island in Texas when Villanueva’s two children were swept by the Guadalupe River (Screengrab/Kens5)

A good Samaritan died after helping to rescue two children who were swept away by the current of the Guadalupe River in Texas.

US Navy veteran Casandra Kendrick, 22, rushed to help Victor Villanueva, 30, and his two children during the incident on Sunday near Seguin, about 35 miles northeast of San Antonio, according to the Guadalupe County Sheriff’s Office.

After the children were pulled out of the river, Kendrick drowned while trying to rescue the father, Villanueva, who also died.

Kendrick was at the river with some 20 family members while Villanueva was spending the day with his three children on an island in the middle of the river in Guadalupe County when the incident took place.

It was after Villanueva was able to successfully pull his children from the water and hand them off to Kendrick that he began experiencing difficulty himself as the water pushed him downriver, the sheriff’s office said.

Kendrick jumped in after him as the father went underwater, witnesses said, but neither of them resurfaced.

Kendrick’s body was found on Sunday night, while Villanueva’s was recovered a day after the incident on Monday, about a mile downstream from where he went missing, Guadalupe Sheriff Sgt Kelly Mann was quoted as saying by the Associated Press.

“My sister’s a hero,” Kendrick’s sister Sarah Hammack was quoted as saying by CBS affiliate KENS 5 TV. “She’s really strong. Always put people before her[self],” Hammack said. “She hung on to that baby and she passed it off and she did a good job.”

“People would be too scared, but she helped them and honestly I doubt she’d change a thing about it,” another cousin, Alyssa Boe was quoted as saying by the station.

Additional reporting by agencies