INGRAM, Texas – In the wake of devastating flooding along the Guadalupe River, more than a thousand search-and-rescue workers have been combing through multiple Hill Country towns in search of missing victims.
For some residents, the official response wasn’t fast enough, and they took it upon themselves to help find their neighbors.
One of those locals is Ashton Bolton, who grew up along the Guadalupe and knows its banks as well as anyone.
Days after the wall of water tore through the region, destroying homes and RVs and sweeping away neighbors, Bolton says he set out to find survivors or at least bring closure to families.
“It was the faintest scream, man,” Bolton recalled.
The sound cut through the rush of the river and the snap of branches as he walked along the banks of the Guadalupe River.
“You know when you’re in a very quiet room, it sounds like a vacuum? That’s how it sounded,” he said.
Bolton said the flood’s aftermath in his hometown was “crushing.” Still, he and a few friends walked miles along the riverbanks, searching.
“It’s God’s work, really. I mean, it was just him and I out there by ourselves,” Bolton said.
On the day after the flood, he ventured out near his home.
“It was so quiet, it was loud, you know what I mean? But I was in the water, I was hearing the water, but I know I heard her,” he said. “Not just once, two or three times.”
Bolton said he questioned whether he was imagining it.
“I said, ‘Man, I don’t know if I’m hallucinating, man. I swear I hear this little girl.’ It’s a girl scream. It’s not a boy scream, it’s a girl’s scream. Just loud and high-pitched,” he said.
Moments later, he saw her.
“I went between underneath this tree and this little thicket, and right as I turned my head left. Looking west upstream, and there she was,” Bolton said. “She was just bruised up and scraped up a little bit. She was cold. She was COLD. Her lips were swollen purple. I got home that night and taking a warm frickin’ shower. Really? I’m fortunate enough to take a warm shower.”
The girl, no older than 10, was lifeless. She had ended up on a small raised patch of dry ground in the middle of the river.
“But I like to tell myself the way that she was laying, she looked like she was dancing. Like she was happy to go to the Lord. Like she was happy,” Bolton said.
After calling 911, deputies needed Bolton’s help to get the girl’s body across the still-swollen river.
“Once the deputies came, he said, we’re gonna need a kayak. Well, I know there’s one upstream. So I had to cross back over in water up to my chest,” Bolton said.
He described what happened next after calling 911.
“Had to lay her body on a kayak. And put her back in the river and just float her across. And take her out of the kayak and put her in a body bag,” he said.
Bolton can’t explain how the scream led him to her. But for him, the search wasn’t over.
“Let’s keep going, Mystic is right there,” he said.
In the days that followed, Bolton and his friends searched for personal belongings along the river, items they hoped could be returned to families.
“Allie, Allie W, I don’t know her last name, I found her a little blue backpack with her pink brush in it and her bug bite and her lotion,” he said. “I wasn’t going to lay them back down in the river bed, back in the mud. Any piece of clothing we saw because they all had tags on them and I don’t know if they’re machine washable but they all have little cute little stickers on them like little rainbows or something little girls.”
Bolton and his girlfriend, Lauren, spent days collecting, sorting and bagging the items.
“Lauren’s picking up these cute little dresses, man. Cute little tiny dresses,” he said.
For Bolton, returning these items is about giving families something to hold onto.
“It’s my job in my home, my hometown, my backyard. I’m responsible for these little girls. I need to find them. I need take care of them like they’re my own,” he said.
