As her 12-year-old daughter screamed for help, a Gwinnett County mother of three drowned in the ocean while on a family beach trip.
Jacqueline Landaverde, who would have turned 37 on Thursday, died July 18 in Longboat Key, about 10 miles north of Sarasota, according to a police report obtained by the AJC.
People on the beach who heard the child's screams administered CPR on the woman, who was not breathing and had no pulse when a man pulled her to shore, witnesses told Longboat Key investigators. But Landaverde was pronounced dead after being transported to Sarasota Memorial Hospital.
Landaverde, her husband Daniel, and their three children, of Snellville, were staying at the Turtle Crawl Inn while on a trip with their Norcross church, Centro Cristiano Monte Sinai, Daniel Landaverde told the AJC Tuesday. He is too grief-stricken to speak further about his wife, he said.
The couple's daughter, Sara, told investigators she was on a boogie board in the ocean with her parents when her mother, who was not a good swimmer, started having trouble, according to police. While Sara, the oldest of three children, paddled to the shore, her father tried to help her mother, the girl told police.
"They had gone out a little ways in the water when they started getting swept out into deeper water and Jacqueline could no longer touch the bottom," the police report states. "She started struggling in the water and [Daniel] tried helping her until he began to be overcome by the outgoing current. He felt he also was in danger of drowning and began swimming for shore. He reached shore but she did not."
The three Landaverde children stayed with another church member while their father accompanied his wife to the hospital, according to police. Jacqueline Landaverde was pronounced dead shortly before 6 p.m.
A funeral was held Monday for Jacqueline Landaverde at the family's church. Her family plans to bury her Guatemala, her native country.
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