39-year-old tour guide, Julio Escobar, drowned in a fast rising Caves Branch river on Christmas Eve.
The very experienced Escobar was taking tourists on one of the tours offered by Ian Anderson Caves Branch Jungle Lodge, where he had worked for the past two decades. When the river started to rise rapidly, Escobar volunteered to find a safe spot for the tourists and the other guides to cross. It was while testing that new crossing that something went wrong, sending Escobar into the of the rushing current.
Well, speaking now for the first time since the incident, his mother says many things went wrong which contributed to her son's demise.
Speaking Spanish, she says her son would not drown easily - but after he was hit by a log - he did not get immediate support to try and save him:
Victoria Quijada, Mother Of Drowned Man
"It was by rumours from his work colleagues that talking and giving condolences I came to realize lots of things that have been clarified that aren't correct and aren't what they have declared. My son was a worker with the experience he has 18 years of experience and in the moment of the accident, he was
accompanied by two guys who were inexperienced. He was the most experienced the one who had been teaching them so there was in front of him and he was able to get out and my son in the middle and the last one behind and they haven't said this to me but I hear it from the workers that he was hit by a branch, that a branch hit him and he threw it away and after the fall he had an injury from here to here and that injury didn't cause him to react because he was accustomed to moving in those rivers. He was not a man who would easily drown its only because the river was high and the most painful part for me is that this happened early at 12;30 in the morning and no one told us anything not to me or to his wife or anyone. We found out when people started talking about it and we realized it at four in the evening."
ESCOBAR'S mother claims that while his colleagues saw the signs that he was drowning, she feels they didn't make the effort to save him.
She additionally claims that they didn't start looking for him for an hour and a half. The resort owner declined comment when we spoke to him after the incident.
