Five children 16 and under in northern Texas were killed this week in the aftermath of a winter storm that caused at least 23 deaths in a dozen states.
Three boys died on Monday after falling through an ice-covered pond in Bonham, Texas, as their mother tried frantically to save them. On Sunday in Frisco, about 50 miles to the southwest, two teenagers were fatally injured when their sled, which was being pulled by a Jeep, crashed into a curb and then a tree, the police said.
As Texas emerges from a storm that blanketed cities with heavy snow and dangerously cold temperatures, families are mourning young victims while medical teams and state authorities are warning residents of the grave risks posed by winter weather in a region less accustomed to snow and bitter cold.
On Monday outside Bonham, in northeast Texas near the border with Oklahoma, emergency responders and a neighbor helped pull three children from a private pond, the Fannin County Sheriff’s Office said. The two older children, ages 8 and 9, were taken to a hospital and died. The third child, who was 6, did not resurface, but his body was later found after a search of the pond.
This week their mother recounted her frantic efforts to save them.
“How do you go from having six kids to three?” their mother, Cheyenne Hangaman, told KWTX-TV of Waco, Texas.
She said the boys went outside to play on Monday, when freezing temperatures had gripped the town, which was dusted with layers of snow. The boys were headed for a nearby hill to try out a length of cardboard they were to use as a sled, she said.
“I told them to stay off the ice, stay away from the pond,” Ms. Hangaman said.
But when Howard, 6, ambled onto the icy pond, Kaleb, 8, and EJ, 9, followed to retrieve him. Alerted by a daughter about their predicament, Ms. Hangaman said she scrambled after them, the ice breaking underneath her as she tried to haul them one by one onto a stable section of the ice, so she could turn to the next.
“I tried to pick one up, put him on the ice, it would just break, keep falling in,” she said in an interview with CBS News. “It was three of them, only one me. That’s why I couldn’t save them.”
“I had to watch them struggle and drown,” she told the station, visibly distraught. “I couldn’t help them.”
She could not be reached on Wednesday.
Maggie Berger, a spokeswoman for the Texas Parks and Wildlife Department, said in an interview on Wednesday that when emergency personnel arrived at the pond, they found Ms. Hangaman out of the pond, soaking wet. Game wardens launched a boat to try to break up the ice, and one of them later retrieved the body of the youngest child.
The water was about waist deep, Ms. Berger said.
The storm has been linked to at least 23 deaths in 12 states, with other reported fatalities being investigated. More snow and cold weather is in the forecast this weekend, including in Washington, D.C., Maryland and Virginia.
On Sunday in Frisco, Texas, 30 miles north of Dallas, Elizabeth Angle and Grace Brito, both 16, were on a sled being pulled by a Jeep Wrangler. The Frisco Police Department said witnesses reported that the sled struck a curb and then a tree.
Elizabeth died in the hospital, her mother, Megan Angle, confirmed on social media on Monday, saying she and her husband, Brian Angle, were in “deep despair and utter shock.” Grace was placed on life support in critical condition after the accident, but her family confirmed on Tuesday that she had died, CBS News reported.
On Wednesday, the Frisco Police Department confirmed, without naming her, that the second teenager had died.
“This tragedy serves as a reminder of the dangers posed by winter weather conditions,” the police said, adding that “snow and ice can create extremely slippery surfaces and lead to serious or even deadly accidents.”
Cook Children’s Medical Center in Fort Worth said on Monday that the storm had turned North Texas into a “sheet of ice” that prompted a spike in emergency room visits related to sledding accidents. Its medical center treated more than 52 children for sledding-related injuries over the weekend, for bone fractures, cuts and head and facial trauma.
Christine Hauser is a Times reporter who writes breaking news stories, features and explainers.
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