SHERMAN, Texas (KXII/Gray News) – Authorities are searching for an 8-year-old girl who went missing after a fatal crash in Sherman, Texas off US-75 into a flooded drainage Tuesday morning.
According to officials, emergency personnel responded around 9:30 a.m. after receiving a 911 call.
Lieutenant Samuel Boyle said the vehicle left the road and got caught in a drainage ditch. He said the dangers escalated as rain poured down in the area.
Six people were inside the vehicle. Four were rescued and taken to Sherman Medical Center.
First responders rushed to locate unaccounted passengers — searching anywhere the rising water current flowed, breaking off into neighboring creeks.
One body was recovered late Tuesday afternoon, but the other remains missing.
The city’s spokesperson, Nate Strauch, said crews searched most of the night to try and locate the girl and resumed before sunrise Wednesday morning, “with members expanding the search area outside of Sherman and into the lower branches of Post Oak and Choctaw creeks.”
Police plan to shift their search focus into the county, targeting some locations they have not yet looked.
No names or ages of the other passengers have been released but Sherman PD said the family was traveling from Durant to Mckinney.
The cause of Tuesday’s crash remains under investigation.
“It likely had to do with a large accumulation of water and maybe some hydroplaning, which is a very dangerous situation,” said Boyle. “Once they’re in that drainage ditch, they’re really at the mercy of the water flow and the speed at which that’s going down. it’s a tragedy, it really is.”
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