Survivor recalls horror

“GRAB the baby!”

Those were the last words Tia Coleman, pictured, recalls her sister-in-law yelling before the tourist boat they were on sank into a Missouri lake, killing 17 people, including nine of Coleman’s family members.

A huge wave hit, scattering passengers on the vessel known as a duck boat into Table Rock Lake near Branson, Coleman said. When the Indianapolis woman came up for air, she was alone. She prayed.

“I said, ‘Lord, please, let me get to my babies’,” she told reporters from her wheelchair Saturday in the lobby of a hospital where she’s recovering after swallowing lake water.

“… ‘If they don’t make it, Lord, take me too. I don’t need to be here’.”

Coleman recalled spotting the rescue boat and managed to reach it, “somehow”.

Earlier, from her hospital bed, she recounted to television station KOLR her sisterin-law’s last words.

Coleman’s husband and three children, ages 9, 7 and 1; her 45-year-old sister-in-law and two-year-old nephew; her mother-in-law and father-inlaw and her husband’s uncle all died Thursday night in the deadliest accident of its kind in nearly two decades.

Others killed included a Missouri couple who had just celebrated a birthday; another Missouri couple on what was planned as their last extended vacation; an Illinois woman who died while saving her granddaughter’s life; an Arkansas father and son; and a retired pastor who was the boat’s operator.

None of the 31 passengers on board was wearing a life jacket, according to an incident report released Saturday by the Missouri State Highway Patrol. Investigators were trying to determine what sent the vesselto its demise. An initial assessment blamed thunderstorms and winds that approached hurricane strength.