21-Year-Old Who Had Just Been Baptized Dies Trying to Save Drowning Girl: 'He Didn't Think Twice'

Mar. 15, 2025

Lincer López.Photo:Carmen Mata/GoFundMe

Carmen Mata/GoFundMe

Moments after being baptized, a 21-year-old man died attempting to save a girl from drowning at a Texas lake.

According to theWaxahachie Police Department, authorities responded to a drowning call at Boat Dock Park at Lake Waxahachie around 12:45 p.m. local time, on Saturday, Aug. 24. Upon arrival, they discovered that the man drowned trying to rescue the girl.

“The 21-year-old male was recovered from the lake and transported to the hospital, where he was pronounced deceased,” the statement read.

The department didn’t share the victim’s name, but ABC affiliateWFAAreported that family identified him as Lincer Lopez.

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Lincer’s family and friends told WFAA that he was at the lake for his baptism and that afterwards, the church group was enjoying the water when the teenage girl began to drown.

In an interview with PEOPLE on Monday, Aug. 26, Jacob Bell, the boater who ended up rescuing the drowning girl, says that he and his friend Craig McDonald were out fishing that morning. After he dropped off McDonald at the boat ramp, Bell, 47, says he heard some screaming.

“I looked over there and I saw this little girl swimming towards me, and I was probably a hundred yards from her,” Bell says, sharing that he saw she was “holding onto somebody else” whose head was “down in the water.”

Bell, who pulled both girls into the boat, recalls the drowning teen appeared blue when he began administering CPR. “I just kept pumping,” he says. “And then she started vomiting and she started taking deep breaths again."

By the time he got ashore and police began helping with the girl, Bell said that he could hear a group of people talking in Spanish about how there was somebody else still out there.

“I ran out the lake and where they were pointing to,” Bell says. “I dove down a few times and then I could feel them down there on the bottom. He was probably 12 feet down and pulled him up off the bottom and kind of [dragged] him over to where the police were.”

As for Lincer, Bell says that he was told the 21-year-old had been baptized less than an hour before the incident, and that “he was trying to support his family back in Mexico.”

Lincer’s uncle, Jacobo Lopez, told WFAA that his late nephew was a hero. “He didn’t think twice about rescuing someone else,” Lopez said.

AGoFundMewas established so that the man’s family can bring his body to his hometown of Chiapas in Mexico. As of Aug. 26, the fundraiser has generated approximately $13,000.

PEOPLE reached out to the GoFundMe organizer for additional information.

source: people.com