Daughter tells her mother ‘I love you’ moments before sinking to her death in California Aqueduct
A woman who died after her car went off the road and overturned in the California Aqueduct in Hesperia managed to call her mother and tell her she loved her before she died, her family said at a news conference Friday.
The family of Xanthel Linares, 24, said she was the driver of a car that authorities say plunged into the aqueduct about 2:30 a.m. near Main Street and Escondido Avenue.
After landing in the aqueduct, Linares called her mother, Patricia Linares, the mother, told reporters at an emotional news conference hours after the crash.
“Mommy, Mommy, I jumped in the water,” Linares recalled her daughter saying.
“ ‘Mommy, the car, I went in the water,’ ” she said. “I go, like, ‘What water?’ ”
“She goes, ‘The aqueduct, Mommy.’ She was screaming desperately,” Linares said before becoming overcome with emotion and stepping away from the media.
According to the victim’s sister, the last thing Linares told her mother was, “I love you.”
Members of the San Bernardino County Sheriff’s Department dive team were unable to recover Linares in time. She was pronounced dead at the scene, and the cause of the crash is ongoing.
For breaking California news, follow @JosephSerna on Twitter.
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