A selfless New Jersey woman who drowned in a flash flood while trying to save her neighbors made a heartbreaking call to her mother as the water rose to her neck — sobbing, “‘I can’t swim, Mommy.”
Shakia Garrett, 33, made the last phone call while trying to help three neighbors in Elizabeth who also succumbed to Hurricane Ida last Wednesday, her family told NJ.com
“She was crying. We just couldn’t get to her,” said her mother, Sharon Garrett, who lives just three miles away in Roselle.
“She was the sweetest girl who got along with everybody,” the grieving mom said of the youngest of eight children. “She had a very good heart.’’
Garrett had been trying to help her friends and neighbors — Jose Torres, 71, Rosa Espinal, 72, and their 38-year-old son Jose — when they became four of the 27 so far confirmed dead in New Jersey from the storm.
People leave flower’ outside the Oakwood Plaza Apartments, the complex where Shakia Garrett died. Eduardo Munoz Alvarez/AP
Residents seen outside the Oakwood Plaza Apartments complex in Elizabeth, New Jersey after the flooding. AP Photo/Eduardo Munoz Alvarez“As the water started getting crazier, she tried to get them out of there,” family friend Salaam Ismiall, the director of the National United Youth Council Inc, told the local outlet.
It “did not take long for the water to get like that. It burst through the toilet and started gushing,” he said of the apartment in the Oakwood Plaza complex.
“I consider her a hero,” Ismiall told NJ.com.
Water reportedly burst through the toilet and started filling the apartment. Brendan McDermid/REUTERS
New Jersey had the highest death toll from Ida. Brendan McDermid/REUTERSNew Jersey had the highest death toll from Ida, with officials warning it could still rise as at least four people remain missing.
