Three-year-old girl, playing outside Alabama ice-cream parlour, vanished down a grease pit and drowned
It all happened in a matter of seconds, says coroner, as parents mourn loss of Sadie Andrews
Three-year-old Sadie Grace Andrews and her siblings wanted to run around.
During a family outing Saturday afternoon, the preschooler was playing in a grassy area outside a Bruster’s ice cream shop in Auburn, Alabama, when she stepped on an unsecured lid to an underground grease pit, Lee County Coroner Bill Harris said.
Harris said surveillance footage showed the lid flip up and the young child fall straight down into the grease pit. The lid then landed, upside down, on top of the hole.
“It all happened in a matter of seconds,” the coroner told The Washington Post.
The child was later found unresponsive – facedown in a 1.8-metre-deep pit filled with sludge, Harris said Monday. She was rushed to a hospital but could not be resuscitated, he said.
“We know without a shadow of a doubt our baby is with Jesus,” Sadie’s mother, Corrie Andrews, told Al.com, adding: “Her name means ‘God’s thoughtful princess,’ and she really was that – always expressing gratefulness and love for God and other people. She would light up a room with her smile; she walked with a skip in her step. I’ve never met a more joyful child who loved God with all her heart.”