A hypothermic toddler has been found clinging to her drowned mother after they were swept away from their vehicle in southeast Texas late Tuesday, according to police.
The woman and her daughter were driving south through central Beaumont — a city some 75 miles northeast of Houston near the border with Louisiana — when their vehicle got stuck in high water, said police.
The woman then pulled into a parking lot and fled the car with her child, Beaumont Police Department said in a statement on Facebook. Police believe she was then swept away into a flooded drainage canal before floating about half a mile away from her vehicle.
Officers and two fire rescue divers later spotted the mother and daughter while patrolling the area in a boat. Police said they plucked the pair from the water moments before the two slipped under a floating railroad trestle.
Rescuers found the woman unresponsive and the child suffering from hypothermia, according to officials. They tried to revive the mother but she never regained consciousness. The child was in a stable condition.
Police did not say how old the girl is, although the Associated Press reported she was 18-months-old.
The pair’s identities are being withheld until family members have been notified.
Related: Harvey Doubling Back After Houston Deluge, Louisiana in Crosshairs
Beaumont has been particularly hard hit by the storm. The National Weather Service said two inches of rain an hour were falling over the city Tuesday and with 38 mph gusts of wind.
Harvey is supposed to make landfall again sometime early Wednesday.
The storm was expected to pack winds up to 45 mph and drench the upper Texas coast and southwestern Louisiana with 6 to 12 inches of rain before heading deeper inland, according to the National Weather Service.
