“Grab the baby!”
Those were the last words Tia Coleman recalls her sister-in-law yelling before the tourist boat they were on sank into a Missouri lake, killing 17 people, including nine of Coleman’s family members.
A huge wave hit, scattering passengers on the vessel, known as a duck boat, into Table Rock Lake near Branson, Coleman said, recounting the ordeal from a hospital bed.
When the Indianapolis woman came up for air, she was alone, Coleman told television station KOLR on Saturday.
She spotted a rescue boat and swam as fast as she could.
Coleman’s husband and three children, ages nine, seven and one; her 45-year-old sister-in-law and two-year-old nephew; her mother-in-law and father-in-law and her husband’s uncle all died on Thursday night in the deadliest accident of its kind in nearly two decades.
Others killed included a Missouri couple who had just celebrated a birthday; another Missouri couple who was on what was planned as their last extended vacation; an Illinois woman who died while saving her granddaughter’s life; an Arkansas father and son; and a retired pastor who was the boat’s operator.
State and federal investigators were trying to determine what sent the vessel, originally built for military use in World War II, to its demise.
An initial assessment blamed thunderstorms and winds that approached hurricane strength, but it wasn’t clear why the amphibious vehicle even ventured into the water.
Coleman said the crew told passengers they were going into the water first, before the land-based part of their tour, because of the incoming storm.
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