Carl Jeter called 911 after seeing a woman clinging to a tree amid a raging river during the deadly flooding in Kerr County.
CENTER POINT, Texas — Center Point resident Carl Jeter calls what happened Friday morning right outside his door a true miracle.
“There’s no other way to explain it,” Jeter said of hearing screams and jumping into action to help save a young woman clinging to a tree in the raging Guadalupe River.
Jeter said, “I came up on the deck and she saw me, so she started to scream out loud and I thought she was in the water going down the river and I finally looked and was able to spot her in the tree and so you know I began to holler back to her. ‘Hey, I see you we’ll get you help.’ And I called 911.”
Jeter said when help didn’t arrive after 20 minutes or so he drove down the road and asked a DPS trooper for help.
Help arrived after a while in the form of a rescue boat with a swift water team that braved the white water to save the 22-year-old woman, that Jeter only identified as Devyn.
Jeter said Devyn eventually told rescuers she went into the water in a campground in Ingram, almost 20 miles upriver.
Jeter said they didn’t want her to lose hope during the wait.
“We had a little bullhorn we were hollering back and forth at her to let her know ‘Hey we’re just – hang on, hang on, hang on!’ because she was desperate. I mean desperate.”
Jeter said his family watched as bobbing rescue personnel fought the elements to make sure the woman had a flotation device and then encouraged her to take a leap from the branch that had been sheltering her.
Carl’s son said by the time the boat was able to get into place, the water level had receded 10 to 12 feet.
“Essentially she did a face plant into the boat,” Josh Jeter said, while Carl added, “After they were able to pluck her out, we brought her into our house and gave her a shower.”
Jeter said the long tossing, tumble down the river took a toll on the woman.
“We clothed her because it had stripped all of her clothing off and we gave her something to drink, a nap and then we had a long talk with her.” Jeter said of the experience the whole family called surreal.
Josh said the woman told a horrible story of what happened when rushing water overtook their campsite upstream.
“She told us that at roughly 4 a.m. they started noticing the water coming up,” Josh said, adding the extended family tried to escape.
“They, she, her mom and dad got in their car to try and go up the hill to get out of the water, but the car was overtaken by the water and stalled out,” Josh said, adding the family climbed out of the sunroof of the car in a desperate attempt to survive.
“Then she said they were able to get on a tree and her mom and her were clinging to each other. The dad was behind holding onto them,” Josh said, adding, “The water kept overtaking them and eventually they got swept away.”
Josh said the woman told of how she lost her dad immediately.
“Her and her mother were able to hang on to each other for a while then they got taken under in some sort of a rapid of some kind. They got separated. She said they were screaming back and forth, coming down the river for a period of time,” Josh said of the horrific ordeal.
“Then she lost her mom, and she said that she had clung to a handful of trees. They were small, what ended up getting pushed over and overtaken,” Josh said, with Jeter adding the woman told them of being swept over at least for dams.
They said she recounted that she passed under numerous bridges and saw people as the water raced her downstream, but nobody saw her or heard her cries for help.
Jeter said, “She was waving at them, and she couldn’t get anybody’s attention and just continued down the river till she got to this spot. I mean it’s an absolute miracle. There’s no way you survived that trip. I don’t know how she did it. I really don’t,” Jeter said.
Jeter said when the boat finally made it to shore, bystanders were elated.
“Oh my God, we all cheered! I mean there were several people here and we all just began to cheer and hoop and holler and carry on!” Jeter said, adding they got the woman blankets and towels and comforted her because she could barely walk.
“I mean she was so exhausted and beat up. I mean she’s beat up pretty good,” Jeter said, adding the woman started calling family members as soon as she was able.
Josh said, “She had a fairly decent cut on the back of her head that she didn’t even know about when the paramedics were checking her out until she took a shower and she said she put shampoo in her hair and then it started to burn. And then that was when I mean she was just in so much shock that she didn’t have a clue what was going on.”
Jeter said in addition to the woman’s mother and father, an aunt, uncle and cousin were also swept away.
Josh said he reached out to the reunification resources and reported all the names of the missing.
So far, social media posts claim all five family members from the Midland area are still unaccounted for.