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Teen drowns trying to save brother
A 15-year-old boy drowned trying to save his younger brother from the Sacramento River.
SACRAMENTO, Calif. - A 15-year-old who died in the Sacramento River over the weekend was trying to save his younger brother, the family said.
Amari Quarles and his family frequently spend time at Sand Cove Park, which sits along the Sacramento River.
"We always go down there. It's beautiful, it's peaceful," said the boy's stepmother Yolanda Sashe.
But Sunday's family gathering turned fatal, KCRA reported.
Amari and his 13-year-old brother Elijah Sashe, were playing football on the beach and had no plans of going into the water. That was until their ball ended up in the river, according to the news outlet.
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Elijah went into the surging river to retrieve the football, but he started struggling. So Amari jumped in to help his younger brother.
"I see them and their heads are just bobbing on the water," said Sashe. "Them sitting there, I knew they were in distress. And it was nothing. No question to be asked. You gotta go get them. That's it."
With the brothers unable to swim, their stepmother jumped in.
"It turned really bad very fast," Sashe recalled. "It was straight thrashing you back and forth back and forth. "You cannot fight. You can't go against the current… It drags you down."
Rescue crews even had difficulties going up against the river's current, according to family.
"If it's hard for them, how do normal people make it?," said the boys' dad, James Sashe.
"Our trained rescue swimmers were out there and they had to rotate quite frequently," said Capt. Justin Sylvia from the Sacramento Fire Department. "It gets very tiring when you're out there searching for someone and trying to swim in that current."
A boater got Yolanda Sashe and Elijah to safety, but Amari was swept away.
"He had told me, ‘One of us is going to have to go down,’ and he made sure it wasn’t me," Elijah told KXTV.
Sashe recalled the moment she realized her stepson was gone.
"I looked down at him and I looked up and I felt his hands drop," the woman said. "Something came and pulled him away from me and he was gone."
Amari's body was recovered in the water late Sunday night by rescue crews and the Sacramento County Sheriff's Office.
"I need it to be known that Amari was a hero," James Sashe said. "He died a hero and that's a death that most people never get to experience … He did it at 15 years old."
A GoFundMe page to cover funeral costs had raised $24,000 of its $50,000 goal as of Friday.