Recovery efforts will continue Tuesday for a young girl who fell into a creek in Chester, Pennsylvania, over the weekend, following heavy rain.
On Saturday, March 23, around 6:55 p.m., 6-year-old Lin’ajah Brooker fell into the Chester Creek near 8th and James streets.
Emergency personnel from local, county, state and federal agencies searched for the girl Saturday night and all day on Sunday but were unable to find her.
On Monday, the Chester Bureau of Fire as well as Pennsylvania State Police searched Chester Creek using a towed side-scan sonar device. The device provided images of parts of the creek bank that are underwater as well as the creek bed. Multiple scans of the entire creek – from above the entry point to the Delaware River – were performed. Nothing was found, however, after the scans were completed and the images were reviewed.
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The search for Brooker will continue on Tuesday as officials use scent canines.
Brooker fell into the water after a coastal storm brought heavy rain throughout the region. People who regularly fish at the creek know the danger the area can pose following a storm similar to the one that hit the area on Saturday.
“It’s just really rushing. You get a real big surge of water. It all comes out of the drainage from the runoff from the roads. And then you got the current. The current. You got the high tides,” Leo Parker of Aston, Delaware County, said.
Sunday evening, Brooker’s family gathered in Chester for a vigil in honor of the girl who they described as funny, sweet and smart.
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Her family members are also raising concerns about gaps in a fence at a park where Brooker was playing shortly before going towards the creek. Chester’s Mayor said the girl may have gained access to the creek by going through those gaps.
“It’s sad that my daughter over there had to experience this,” Brooker’s grandmother, Kimberly Richardson, said. “I’m grieving for her. I’m grieving for the dad. I’m trying to be strong for myself. And this is hard. When the city of Chester, all they had to do, is seal it off.”
