Divers recovered the body of a 10-year-old girl from New Jersey's Passaic River on Friday, two days after she went missing while swimming near Pulaski Park in Passaic, Mayor Hector Lora announced.
The girl had entered the water Wednesday alongside two friends — a brother and sister, ages 10 and 11. According to Mayor Lora, the boy drowned while attempting to save his sister, who had been struggling to stay afloat. The sister managed to climb out of the water and was reunited with her parents. The boy was found dead roughly three hours after he entered the river, approximately 50 feet from where he went under.
The girl's body was located Friday after a couple in a nearby building spotted 'something' in the river and called 911, Lora said.
A Good Samaritan attempted to rescue the two drowning children but was unable to reach them due to the river's raging currents. The search had been complicated by darkness and high water levels caused by recent storms. The Passaic Fire Department led recovery operations, with boats and scuba dive teams from the Passaic County Sheriff's Office also deployed.
The identities of the three children have not been released. 'I ask that you continue to pray for the families and to hold them up in your thoughts because they are in need of your support,' Lora wrote on social media.
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Three children went into a river. Two did not come home. That is the whole story, and no amount of policy framing changes the weight of it.
What it does raise — plainly, without politics — is a question communities near urban waterways have answered poorly for decades: access without safety infrastructure is not access, it is exposure. Passaic River's currents were strong enough to defeat a Good Samaritan and complicate a multi-agency dive operation for two days. The children had none of that context when they waded in. Signage, barriers, and community swim programs cost a fraction of the emergency response that follows their absence. That is not alarmism. That is arithmetic.
