A father frantically searching for his daughter — who he feared was swept away by the catastrophic flooding of Texas’ Guadalupe River — instead made a grim discovery.
Ty Badon was calling out his daughter’s name as he and his son searched the land near receded flood waters when Badon said they discovered the body of a child, according to CNN.
“My son and I were walking and I thought it was a mannequin,” Badon said, becoming emotional as he recounted the grim moment.
“It was a little boy,” he said, shaking his head, “eight or ten years old, and he was dead.”
“So we were just walking, doing the same thing we were doing when we stumbled across him,” he told CNN.
“Hopefully we can find our children, my daughter and her friends,” he paused, then added: “Alive.”
Search and rescue teams working around the clock have recovered 43 victims from the flooding, 28 adults and 15 kids, official said. The number of missing is unknown.
Badon’s daughter and three friends were staying at a nearby cabin, according to CNN.
“It’s a very nice house, it’s no longer there,” Badon told the network.
One of the people in the cabin had called home to say the water was starting to rise, and at some point handed off the phone to Baden’s daughter, Joyce Catherine, he recounted.
“So he gave the phone to Joyce Catherine and Joyce Catherine said: ‘They just got washed away,’” Badon told CNN. “And then a few seconds later the phone went dead. And that’s all we know.”
“So we presume she got washed away as well,” the distraught dad added.
As soon as he heard Badon raced to the cabin from his home in Beaumont and began searching for his daughter.
“We pray that all four of them are still alive,” he told the network.
Then Badon made a desperate plea.
“I ask if you would pray,” Badon say to the reporter, before turning to the camera and tearing up. “Whoever watches this thing, pray.”
