US police say one of five children rescued after being trapped in a submerged car in the US state of Minnesota has died.
The Minnesota State Patrol announced on its website that five-year-old Zenavia C. Rennie of Brooklyn Center died on Thursday. She was one of five children rescued earlier in the day from a car that veered off a highway ramp and into a frigid pond in suburban Minneapolis.
The car was under water for up to 45 minutes.
St Louis Park city spokesman Jamie Zwilling said the children were unconscious and unresponsive when pulled from the vehicle.
The driver of the car was the mother of some of the children and stepmother to the others. She made it out on her own. One witness described seeing her in the pond, screaming for help.
The woman, Marion N. Guerrido, 23, was able to escape from the four-door sedan on her own. But for nearly 20 minutes, the car remained immersed in the holding pond, with first responders and passers-by initially unable to reach the children.
The children, unconscious and unresponsive at first, were removed from the car and taken to Twin Cities hospitals where they were treated for serious injuries, authorities said. Guerrido was not hospitalised.
"I ran out to the balcony the second I heard the woman screaming," said Jeffrey Robertson, 40, who lives in the Brittany Apartments complex overlooking the pond and made the 911 call at 6.16am local time. He had been watching the morning news in his second-floor apartment when he heard her screams.
"Even in the darkness, I could see a woman standing in water up to her knees. Looking back, everything about her screams told you she was the mother of a child in trouble."
Three of the children riding in the 1998 Grand Am are Guerrido's - sons Alarious Coleman-Guerrido, 7, and Amani Coleman-Guerrido, 5, and daughter Aliyana Rennie, 1, whose father, Julius Rennie, is Guerrido's boyfriend, her Brooklyn Center neighbours said. The other children are Rennie's daughters - Zarihana Rennie, 6, and Zenavia.
The cause of the accident had yet to be determined late on Thursday. No alcohol was detected, according to the Minnesota State Patrol, and state records show no driving violations for Guerrido. Despite the mist, the roads were relatively dry and ice free, authorities said. At that hour, traffic is relatively light.
The car skidded off a highway ramp and landed in water that was "quite deep", and was "incredibly cold", said Lt Eric Roeske.
A passer-by, later identified by the state police as Joel Oine, scaled a fence and went into the water in an attempt to rescue the children, to no avail.
He "jumped in the water, was standing on the roof of the vehicle and the water was up to his neck", Roeske he said.
The children could not be rescued until the car had been at least partly towed from the water, Roeske said.
Roeske said it was unclear why the car went off the ramp and how fast it was going. There is no guardrail between the road and the pond.
It was uncertain as to where the car was headed. Nor was it clear early Thursday as to how Guerrido escaped, whether through a door or window. Witnesses told police that she got out of the vehicle as it was sinking, Roeske said.
"Right now, there are a lot of unanswered questions," Roeske said.
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