‘We saw bubbles come up
and we knew she was gone’

TIFFANY MAYER, Simcoe Reformer
MESSIAH’S CORNERS – It was the perfect day to go for a dip.

The long grass along the shores of Big Creek’s babbling waters wavered in the gentle breeze. A group of young Mennonite girls dressed in their subdued, floral-print frocks, gathered near a bend in the creek to spend a lazy afternoon together while their families visited at a house down the quiet concession road.

Nearby, a herd of cattle basked in the sunlight of the late spring day, chewing their cud. The shallow waters of the river’s edge beckoned the girls to take off their shoes and socks and splash around in the lukewarm stream to cool off.

It was a perfect, idyllic slice of Norfolk’s countryside.

The scene turned into a nightmare when three of the girls waded out further from shore and found themselves struggling to stay afloat in 16 feet of water.

None of the girls could swim. Cries for help filled the air and everyone struggled to pull the girls to safety.

“I thought I wasn’t going to make it. I just heard them screaming to me and somehow they got me and pulled me out of there,” recalled a tearful Sarah Neufeld, 13.

But no one could reach 15- year-old Angie Woelk of Langton.

“It just felt like we went under. Angie was screaming and kind of grabbed at me. Then Angie went under and never came back up,” Neufeld explained.

“We went to save them but we couldn’t get to Angie. Then all of a sudden we saw bubbles come up and we knew she was gone,” said 14-yearold Margaret Wiebe.

The girls managed to flag down a passerby and within minutes, emergency crews arrived at the scene to search for Angie. A U.S. border patrol helicopter equipped with an infrared camera was also called in to help locate the girl, but was unsuccessful.

The search continued yesterday morning with the help of divers from the OPP’s Gravenhurst-based Underwater Rescue and Recovery Unit while hundreds of people from the tight-knit community gathered on a bridge overhead. Others gathered along a wire fence bordering the field where police worked.

One woman clutched a teddy bear. Others leaned on each other for support. Victim services workers from ViCARS attempted to console the bystanders.

Big Creek’s murky brown water was no longer meandering. It was swaggering pompously.

OPP Const. Mark Foster explained how the odds were against Angie.

“It’s clay soil. It gets pretty slippery when it’s wet. She’s a non-swimmer and was fullyclothed.

So the weight of her clothes and the fact that the water was around 60 degrees (Fahrenheit), all those things are working against her,” he said.

Within half an hour of the recovery team’s arrival this morning, Angie’s body was retrieved from Big Creek.

“These creeks are full of debris so it’s very slim that she would have moved very far and the fact that she was fully-clothed in a dress – dresses tend to get snagged on trees and debris,” Foster explained.

Sobs rose from the crowd. A man’s voice wailing Angie’s name could be heard above the crying. People clung tightly to each other as Angie’s parents were led away from the crowd to identify their daughter’s body.

“They found her,” one woman cried into the arms of another.

A post-mortem examination will be conducted today.

“It’s the kind of thing a parent never forgets,” said Foster. “What’s even worse about this is it happened on Father’s day.”