The tearful mother of one of two teens who drowned trying to beat the heat in the Bronx River said she had been trying to teach her daughter to swim.
“I bought her a bathing suit so that I could teach her to swim,” said Elva Torres, 34, whose 15-year-old daughter Crystal Reyes, 15, drowned with a friend Sunday in a section of the river near the Bronx Zoo.
“I take her to the beach. I take her to the pool. But I’m her brains. I tell her how far to go in. I never let her go in without me,” the mom said today.
Cops and witnesses said Reyes lost her footing on a set of slippery rocks and fell into deep water near a waterfall and drowned. Her friend, David Luccioni, plunged in with his boots on in a heroic effort to save her, but got tangled in a patch of debris and branches under the murky water. He drowned, too.
Officials said the victims were part of a larger group that was playing and wading in the restricted area trying to escape the summer heat.
“I’m hurting, both for my baby and the angel who tried to save her,” Torres said. “The cops came knocking on my door asking if I was Crystal’s mom. And I already knew.”
She said she wants to meet with Luccioni’s mother to thank her for her son’s heroics.
David’s father, who is also named David, said the city should erect a higher wall or fence to keep swimmers out. He called his son a hero for trying to save his friend.
Luccioni said he and his son went out every morning to get a buttered roll and coffee. Luccioni went by himself, and left his son’s breakfast by the river.
“He was a great kid,” the distraught dad said. “They were both good kids. It’s hard. We just have to take it one day at a time. I can’t sleep. I close my eyes and see him. I keep seeing the paramedics pumping his chest.”