On Wednesday evening, a mother in Cayo, Belize lost Her 7-year-old daughter to a tragic drowning incident.
The child was reportedly swept away into deeper water while she bathed with her Godmother in the river in Santa Familia.
According to the child’s mother, Marina Vidal, she left her daughter, Rebecca Thompson, in the care of her godmother, a retired Canadian named Mary.
Vidal said Mary insisted on babysitting while she and her husband took a trip to the Vital Statistics office here in Belize City. She explained that she instructed Vidal not to take Rebecca to the river because she could not swim, but Mary did so anyway.
In an interview on Wednesday evening, Mary explained her side of the story, saying that Rebecca went under the water while chasing after a toy, and she was not strong enough to go after her, so she ran to get help. A teenage boy pulled Rebecca out of the river and attempted CPR, to no avail.
But Vidal says that she does not believe that Mary ever took the child to the shallow part of the river, since she said the body was found near the deeper end, over a hill.
She tearfully recounted arriving to the home of the Godmother, then going over to the river bank where her daughter lay covered with a white sheet, guarded by a single police officer.
Vidal is the mother to three children; Rebecca was her only daughter.
