A man drowned to death trying to save a teenage girl in a lake where he had been baptized only an hour earlier.
Lincer Lopez, 21, was at the Boat Dock Park lake in Texas for his baptism on Saturday and stayed with church members afterward, his family and friends told WFAA.
As the group enjoyed the water, a teen girl with them started drowning and Lopez attempted to rescue her.
A boater managed to pull the girl out of the water and revived her through CPR.
Officers with the Waxahachie Police Department responded to reports of a drowning around 12.45pm and rushed Lopez to a hospital, where he was pronounced dead. He was identified by the Tarrant County Medical Examiner.
Lopez, who ‘was part of a church celebration’, was the oldest of seven siblings, according to a GoFundMe page to raise money to transport his body to his hometown in the Mexican state of Chiapas.
He had been so excited about being baptized that he was not able to sleep the prior night, according to his uncle.
‘He was a hero,’ Jacob Lopez told the WFAA in Spanish. ‘He didn’t think twice about rescuing someone else. He didn’t think about the risk that he could die. And he did risk his life to save somebody else’s.’
The boater who saved the girl, Jacob Bell, told the TV station that Lincer’s death was ‘hard’.
‘I haven’t really begun to, it hasn’t sunk in yet,’ said Bell.
Bell, whose brother drowned to death when he was three year sold, also called Lincer ‘a hero’.
‘He had just been baptized and gave his life to the lord, and our family, we pray for his family, and we pray for the little girl’s family,’ he said. ‘And he was a strong boy, they should be very proud of him.’
The GoFundMe page had raised more than $13,000 as of Monday afternoon.
Lincer died a week after a 66-year-old man lost his life diving into Smithville Lake in Missouri to save his girlfriend’s 5-year-old son. The elderly man managed to get the boy back on a boat, but his head went underwater several times and he was pulled by an undercurrent.
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