As the body of 2-year-old Jose Matthew Jauregui Jr. was carried away Wednesday, two days after a flash flood swept him from his mother’s grip, she could not contain her grief.
“I want my baby! I want my baby!” Elsha Guel screamed.
Family members had brought Guel to a railroad bridge above the South Platte River at Franklin Street and Race Court near Riverside Cemetery, where divers had placed her son’s body after pulling it from the nearby river.
Guel – just out of the hospital and wearing purple pajamas – was unable to put one foot in front of the other without leaning against her family.
Moments later, the crying mother collapsed. Some of the same firefighters who helped find her boy scrambled to revive her. She was placed on a gurney and taken to a hospital.
On Monday night, Guel was on a routine walk, pushing Jose in his stroller, when a hailstorm hit. The mother and son entered a narrow concrete tunnel to escape the hail when the flash flood swept her, Jose and his stroller down a gulch leading to the South Platte.
Guel lost her grip on her son, who was carried into the surging South Platte. Firefighters rescued Guel about 200 yards downstream.
Firefighters and family members searched the South Platte and its banks for miles for any sign of Jose, but it was a construction worker who spotted his body at 11:50 a.m. Wednesday and called police.
The body was partly submerged and against a sandbar, several miles from where he was last seen, said Denver Fire Chief Larry Trujillo.
“We prayed at the side of the river that Jesus would bring him home to us, and he did,” said Jose’s great-aunt Julie Guzman, who also went to the site where Jose was found.
“It’s a sad day and it’s a happy day,” Guzman said. “A sad day because we found him dead. It’s happy because we found him.”
Guzman and a dozen other family members wept and hugged firefighters and police officers, whispering “thank you” for their efforts.
“His aunt said, ‘Promise me you will find him,’ and I couldn’t,” Trujillo said. “I am very grateful that there is closure to this, but it is a great, great loss.
“Having the mother at the scene brought it all to reality. The family is obviously a very strong family, but they are hurting.”
Meanwhile, Denver police Officer Jairon Katz, who tried to rescue a young man or teenager swept away near Bible Park during Monday night’s storm, was sent home Wednesday from Denver Health Medical Center. Katz suffered from hypothermia.
The identity of the man is unknown and a body hasn’t been found, said Denver Fire Lt. Phil Champagne. A search for him was called off Tuesday.
“It’s possible that the young man was able to extricate himself from the river,” Champagne said.
No missing-person reports fitting the circumstances have been filed with Denver police, said department spokesman Sonny Jackson.
It took only about an hour for the intense rain to more than triple the flow of the South Platte through Denver on Monday night.
Kevin Stewart of the Urban Drainage and Flood Control District called Monday’s deluge “a hard-hitting and, fortunately, fast-moving storm, a nuisance storm that fills gutters and not homes – and that’s what it did, except in those tragic situations where it caught people in the wrong place.”
Staff writer Ann Schrader contributed to this report.
Staff writer Felisa Cardona can be reached at 303-954-1219 or fcardona@denverpost.com.
