A GRANDMOTHER has died days after heroically diving into a lake in a failed attempt to save her drowning granddaughter.
The woman died on Saturday, one week after she was found unresponsive and the teen was found dead at West Point Lake.
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The 49-year-old woman died in a Georgia hospital on Saturday a week after the initial drowning incident occurred, according to local media reports.
Local authorities in Troup County say 49-year-old Stephanie Walker jumped into the lake on June 11 to try and save her 13-year-old granddaughter Makayla Prather, local news station WSB-TV 2 Atlanta reported.
Makayla had reportedly become panicked while she was swimming in the lake and Stephanie decided to go into the water to rescue her.
“We believe one of the victims entered the water from the shoreline, became distressed,” said Troup County Sheriff’s Deputy Stewart Smith in a statement last week to the LaGrange News about the initial incident.
Smith said they believed Stephanie had become distressed after she jumped.
“And the second victim entered the water in an attempt to help them and became distressed themselves.”
Authorities acknowledged that information on what occurred was limited because there no one was there when it happened.
“There was no eye witness to the incident,” Smith said.
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According to Smith, the Sheriff’s office received the call about the incident from someone who had been with the victims just before the accident happened.
“Our caller who had been with the two prior to the event taking place, had just returned to the location when he found the adult victim in the water,” he said.
The Troup County Sheriff’s Office was notified about the incident around 2.00pm in the afternoon that day, the LaGrange Daily News reported.
According to WSB-TV, when law enforcement got to the lake they found the grandmother unresponsive.
Stephanie was taken to Well Star West Georgia Medical Center, where she died on Saturday, more than a week after the accident.
It took a few hours longer for the rescue teams to locate Makayla.
Her body was not found until later in the evening on Saturday, June 11.
Columbus Fire and Rescue’s dive team located Makayla’s body in the lake.
They retrieved her body around 7.30pm, the local news outlet reported.
