On Saturday, August 24, Lincer Lopez, 21, drowned while attempting to rescue a teenage girl in a lake shortly after his baptism at Boat Dock Park in Texas. According to his family and friends, Lopez was at the lake for his baptism and remained with church members afterward.
As the group enjoyed the water, a teenage girl began to drown. Lopez tried to save her, but despite his efforts, he succumbed to the water. A boater named Jacob Bell managed to pull the girl out of the lake and performed CPR to revive her.
The Waxahachie Police Department responded to the drowning report around 12:45 p.m. and rushed Lopez to the hospital, where he was pronounced dead. The Tarrant County Medical Examiner confirmed his identity.
Lopez, described as part of a church celebration and the oldest of seven siblings, was remembered on a GoFundMe page set up to raise funds for transporting his body to his hometown in Chiapas, Mexico. His uncle shared that Lopez had been so excited about his baptism that he couldn’t sleep the night before.
“He was a hero,” Jacob Lopez told WFAA in Spanish. “He didn’t think twice about rescuing someone else. He didn’t think about the risk that he could die. And he did risk his life to save somebody else’s.”
Jacob Bell, the boater who saved the girl, expressed that Lincer’s death was “hard” and admitted, “I haven’t really begun to, it hasn’t sunk in yet.”
Bell added, “He had just been baptized and gave his life to the Lord, and our family, we pray for his family, and we pray for the little girl’s family. And he was a strong boy; they should be very proud of him.”
