Three hunters tragically died trying to rescue a dog that had fallen into an underground cistern in Texas on Wednesday, local officials confirmed.
The four-person party had planned to meet up with a friend to go hog hunting when one of their dogs escaped their truck and darted out into a cornfield in Bastrop County, outside of Austin.
In the field, the dog fell into a hole that led to the underground tank and the three victims — identified as Florida resident Delvys Garcia, 37, Denise Martinez, 26, and Noel Vigil-Benitez, 45 — tried to save the dog, and then each other.
“It’s a sad day whenever it ends like it did yesterday,” Bastrop County Sheriff Maurice Cook told reporters during a news briefing Thursday, USA Today reported.
“Can you imagine? You have loved ones and they come to Texas to hunt and then it ends like this, which was a sad tragedy that just happened,” he said.
The sheriff’s office said it responded to a report of three people trapped inside of a hole in the ground around 1 a.m. on Wednesday morning.
One of the members of the hunting party is believed to have jumped into the cistern to save the dog, the sheriff’s office said.
The two other victims also got in the hole, “possibly to rescue the first person,” while the fourth person went to the truck to call for help.
The water level in the cistern was far below the opening of the hole at ground level, preventing their escape.
Cisterns are underground reservoirs commonly used for providing water to homes in rural areas.
When responders arrived at the scene, they found an underground cistern partly filled with water and giving off strong fumes, “similar to those of a septic tank,” the sheriff’s office said. There were no signs of life, they reported.
Responders recorded high levels of hydrogen — a toxic gas. Cook told reporters it’s believed the gas affected the buoyancy of the water and caused them to sink rapidly, USA Today reported.
“It wasn’t long in the tank before they went to the bottom,” he said.
Recovery efforts were hindered due to the presence of the gas and concerns about the structural integrity of the tank.
Authorities first tried to dig beside the structure and planned to dig through the side near where the bodies were located, but the effort was abandoned as breaching the structure would weaken the walls making entry unsafe, the sheriff’s office said.
The water was pumped out of the tank and the fumes were ventilated out from the cistern and authorities deployed a small drone to look at the integrity of the walls.
A responder was then lowered into the cistern.
The three bodies, as well as the body of the dog, were recovered by 7:30 p.m., authorities said.
An autopsy from a local funeral home will determine an official cause of death.
Cook said the cistern was on private property.
The property owner, who was not identified, is believed to have recently died, he said.
Authorities did not release the name of the property owner.
The friends all went in to rescue one another, Cook said.
The first man jumped in immediately and the other man and woman took off their shoes and pieces of clothing before leaping after him, according to USA Today.
“That group was there to save each other,” he said. “That takes a lot of guts to jump in.”
