Tamaroa Children Drown in Truck Accident
</element><element id="paragraph-1" type="body"><![CDATA[ A pickup truck that apparently jumped into gear and rolled into a lake as a Tamaroa mother stepped out of it to check the mail carried two youngsters to their death Tuesday night.
The children are identified as Shayace Radake, age 3, and Savannah Morgan-Radake, age 22 months.
The Perry County Sheriff's Department, Tamaroa firemen and the Pinckneyville Volunteer Ambulance Service responded to an 8 p.m. Emergency 911 call at the Bridgett Radake home at 9852 East Tamaroa Road. The home is located in northeast Perry County only minutes from the Jefferson County line. It is technically a Scheller address.
Perry County Sheriff Keith Kellerman said the children were taken by ambulance to Marshall Browning Hospital and pronounced dead by Coroner David Searby at 9:30 p.m.
"The investigation isn't complete," said Kellerman. At this writing the incident is being treated as an accident.
Bridgett Radake, 36, lives on one side of the three-acre lake. Her parents, Richard S. and Gerry Radake , live on the other side of the lake. Gerry Radake said Bridgett had left one of the children, Savannah, at the grandparents' home to play. She went to Pestka's Home Grocery in Tamaroa with son Shayace to buy groceries. Shayace had picked up a couple of things to take home to his sister. Shayace had fallen asleep in the seat of the Ford pickup truck as Bridgett picked up Savannah from her parents' house.
Bridgett pulled back out onto East Tamaroa Road and drove the short distance to her house.
According to Gerry Radake, Bridgett stepped out of the truck to check the mail alongside the drive leading up to the house. Just as she got out, the truck lunged forward and the driver's side door slammed closed. It is not known whether the truck jumped into gear on its own or whether one of the youngsters knocked it into gear. Gerry Radake said Bridgett was frantic and grabbed the truck's tailgate, following it into the water.
Bridgett was in a neck collar from a car accident on October 19th. She had borrowed her parents' truck to run errands. She pulled the collar off when she went into the water.
The children in the truck are two of five in the family and Bridgett's oldest son Justin 19, was nearby and heard his mother screaming. He jumped into the lake. He couldn't break into the truck as it floated out across the water and began to sink. He kept trying, but his efforts failed. He remained with the truck until rescuers came.
Tamaroa fireman Richard Valentine arrived and swam into the water himself as the truck floated out 30 feet from the shoreline and kept sinking. The water pressure kept them from being able to open a door or break out a window.
About that time, other emergency personnel began arriving and Perry County Deputy Josh Harsy went into the water in a second attempt to rescue the children. But, the truck had floated farther from the shoreline and deeper into the lake.
Kellerman said there were no shallows. He said the lake gets deep quickly. Before divers and a wrecker could arrive, a cable or chain was hooked to the truck and the truck was pulled out with a farm tractor. When the truck was halfway out of the water, rescuers kicked in the back glass, but the children had already died. All told, the children had been submerged almost an hour.
Kellerman said the truck was taken to a secure sheriff's department impound site as the investigation continues.