Mom loses grip on kids after car falls into Arkansas lake

PLUMERVILLE, Ark. - A woman whose car plunged off a dead-end road into a lake in rainy, dark weather reportedly told the sheriff she tried to rescue her three young sons from the vehicle but lost her grip on them in the water.

The sheriff, who said the boys drowned, said Monday that investigators were checking her story.

The boys – ages 8, 7 and 2 – were recovered from Lake Brewer after the car went into the water at about 3:30 a.m. Sunday, in a rural area of central Arkansas, and they were pronounced dead at a hospital.

Autopsy results were pending for the boys, but Conway County Sheriff Mike Smith said they drowned. Officials did not release their names.

Relatives of the boys gathered Monday at a rural home near Plumerville.

“It’s a terrible loss. This is a terrible thing,” Larry Hopkins, who identified himself as the boys’ grandfather, said through tears at the house. He then asked a reporter to leave, saying he didn’t want to discuss the deaths.

The woman said she tried to pull the boys to safety from the car but lost her grip on them, Smith told the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette newspaper of Little Rock.

Smith said no charges had been filed, but said investigators were working to verify the mother’s account.