Crime & Safety

Gwinnett Mother of Three Drowns in Florida

The woman was on a trip with Centro Cristiano Monte Sinai, a Norcross-area church.

Several news sources have reported that Jacqueline Landaverde, a mother of three and a Snellville resident, drowned July 18 while in Longboat Key, Fla. She was on a trip with Centro Cristiano Monte Sinai, a church in the Norcross area.

According to The Gwinnett Daily Post, the Longboat Key Police report states that Landaverde "started having trouble" while swimming with her husband, Daniel, and their 12-year-old daughter.

Her daughter said that Landaverde was "not a good swimmer" and the current seemed to be taking her further from shore. She quickly got into water that was too deep to reach the bottom.

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An AJC post of the police report states:

"They had gone out a little ways in the water when they started getting swept out into deeper water and Jacqueline could no longer touch the bottom. She started struggling in the water and [Daniel] tried helping her until he began to be overcome by the outgoing current."

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The daugther and her father made their way to shore to call for help. On July 19, Longboat Key publication Your Observer gave an eye-witness account of a man who was fishing in an inflatable watercraft. He heard calls for help coming from the sandbar area and saw a man “frantically waving and calling out” and the "victim being tumbled by waves." 

He estimated that "Landaverde was under water for three to five minutes" before a Good Samaritan swam the 200 feet to find her floating face down and unresponsive.

They performed CPR on shore until emergency services arrived. She was taken to Sarasota Memorial Hospital where she was pronounced dead at around 5 p.m., according to the police report.

Landaverde would have turned 37 the next day.


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