(Texas) — The last time Matthew Hammond saw his 17-year-old daughter Malaya Grace Hammond, she was singing.
Minutes earlier, Malaya was in the car with her parents, her brother, her sister and her sister’s friend driving to her beloved camp in Missouri where she was so excited to be a counselor, Hammond told ABC News.
When they came upon a bridge in Burnet County that should be over the dry Cow Creek, they instead found the bridge flooded with fast-moving water.
“I tried to stop, but I couldn’t,” he said, overcome with emotion, recalling how their minivan went off the bridge and started taking on water.
Hammond said he shouted at everyone to roll down their windows.
“If we didn’t get ’em down, we’d be done,” he said.
Hammond got his window down and he and his wife escaped through the front of the car. Malaya had the harder task of getting the minivan’s back door open as the water quickly rose, her father said.
“Miraculously, she got it open in time,” he said, and Malaya helped her siblings and the friend escape, sending them all into the rushing waters.
Hammond, an experienced river rafter, called it “the craziest river I’ve ever been in.”
He saw Malaya — a lifeguard and a certified swim instructor — ahead of him in the water.
“She knew to turn on her back,” he said, and she was singing “Rise and Shine Give God the Glory” — a song she planned to teach her campers.
She had the “presence of mind” “to keep herself calm,” he said, crying.
“That was the last I saw her,” he said.
The family searched for Malaya through the weekend. Her remains were recovered on Monday, her father said.
Hammond stressed his immense gratitude for the “extraordinary” first responders who came to help look for his daughter, especially local fire chief Michael Phillips, who responded to their emergency call and later went missing in the floods. He has not been found.
“He sacrificed himself for my family,” Hammond said, crying. “I want to go grieve with his family. … I will do whatever I can for his family.”
As for his own heartbreak, Hammond said through tears, “It’s a form of grief I’ve never known.”
“I’ve lost people close to me, but this is unlike anything I’ve ever experienced,” he said. “If you told me I was gonna be burying my daughter before I left this planet — no, not Malaya Grace.”
His “luminous” Malaya was a talented singer and artist who painted incredible watercolors at 3 years old, he said.
She worked as a barista at her local coffee shop and was known as the peacemaker among her peers.
She always had a “sense of tranquility and peace,” her dad said.
“Her middle name was Grace for a reason — she was grace personified,” he said.
“Just being with her, it just made everything better,” he said. “In a world that’s so out of control … she was the counterbalance to that. She took her sweet, sweet time, and we love that about her. It made us slow down. And I really miss that.”
Last weekend’s catastrophic flooding has claimed the lives of at least 121 people in Texas. Another 166 people are missing.
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