Missing rescuer’s body is found

Volunteer had disappeared after boat hit bridge

Nearly four days after Harvey’s record flooding slammed a rescue boat into an Interstate 45 frontage road bridge, family members of the final, missing volunteer pulled his body from Cypress Creek in Spring.

Alonso Guillen, a 31-year-old disc jockey from Lufkin, disappeared around midnight Wednesday along with two friends after their boat hit the bridge over the creek and capsized. One of them was rescued after clinging to a tree in the rushing water, but days later, after the rains let up and the creek level receded, Guillen and Tomas Carreon Jr. were still missing.

Searchers spotted Carreon’s body floating down the wide, swiftmoving creek around 1 p.m. Friday.

On Sunday afternoon, Guillen’s body floated past a sandy berm where family members had been keeping watch for days, staring out at the murky water. A relative dove in and pulled him to the shoulder of the creek until they were able to bring a boat over to get him onto shore.

Guillen’s father, Jesus, said he’d asked his son not to try to rescue people in the storm, but he insisted, saying he wanted to help people. He cried and prayed on Sunday afternoon as they pulled his son’s body from the water.

“Thank you, God,” he said, “for the time I had with him.”

The recovery of his body brings the number of people who have died or are feared dead from Harvey to nearly 60, and officials warn that more could be found.

Guillen, who was born

“Thank you, God, for the time I had with him.”

Jesus Guillen, father of Alonso Guillen

in Piedras Negras, Mexico, and moved to Lufkin as a teenager, headed south with his friends toward Houston after Hurricane Harvey hit, towing a borrowed boat.

They were trying to reach a flooded apartment complex through the water when they hit a bridge near Interstate 45 and Beltway 8.

Alonso Guillen was a recipient of the Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals program, which temporarily lifted the threat of deportation for immigrants brought to the U.S. before they were 16, family members said.

His father is a lawful permanent resident, but his mother is still in the application process for legal status.

Reached at her home in Piedras Negras, across the border from Eagle Pass, Rita Ruiz de Guillen, 62, said she is heartbroken.

“I’ve lost a great son, you have no idea,” she said, weeping softly. “I’m asking God to give me strength.”

She said she had hoped U.S. Customs and Border Protection officials would take pity and grant her a humanitarian visa so that she could come to Houston and bury her son, but she was turned back at the border.

“When we are with God, there are no borders,” she said. “Man made borders on this earth.”