An Alaska teen desperately tried to hold onto the bodies of his brother and cousin after they died in a boat capsize — with the boy himself only surviving the excruciating 62 hours at sea by praying, family said.
Derek Parker Aghnaanga, 15, “tried to hang onto [his brother and cousin] as long as he could after they drowned,” his aunt, Colleen Walker, wrote on a GoFundMe page supporting the family.
Aghnaanga had been fishing for halibut with his older brother and cousin when their small skiff overturned near St. Lawrence Island and drifted into the Bering Sea on Sept. 4.
One of their fishing lines may have become tangled in the motor, causing the boat to overturn, a family spokesman has said.
The Coast Guard spotted the freezing, starving, exhausted teen survivor sitting on the capsized boat around 10:30 a.m. Sept. 7, after Alaska State Troopers notified them Sunday night that the party hadn’t returned home.
The Coast Guard then asked the crew of the Northwest Explorer, a nearby fishing vessel that included scientists, to help rescue him.
“4 days and 3 nights. He lived on prayer with no food and water. … He said he sat like this praying the whole time,” the boy’s mom, Vina Kulowiyi, said in a Facebook post.
She said her son is now catching up on his sleep after the harrowing ordeal that took the lives of his brother, 35-year-old Sidney Kulowiyi, and cousin, 34-year-old Barton Rookok.
The mom said in another poignant online post that a new grandchild has already been named after her tragic older son Sidney.
“I am proud to announce the birth of my grandson named after my oldest son,” she wrote of the baby born Sept. 7, Dale Sidney Scott Salleka Kulowiyi Jr., who will never meet his namesake uncle.
Kulowiyi, who was the skiff’s captain, drowned after getting stuck under the capsized vessel, while Rookok survived alongside Aghnaanga for a day before becoming distressed, entering the water and dying, family members told KTUU.
“Through the teeth chattering, [Aghnaanga] had mentioned that his brother was still under the skiff” when he was picked up, said Adam White, the rescue boat’s captain, to KTUU.
The bodies of both men were able to eventually be recovered by the same rescue boat, the BBC said.
The surviving teen was suffering hypothermia symptoms when Northwest Explorer crew members wrapped him in blankets and kept him talking as they headed toward Nome to reunite him with his family.
A GoFundMe set up to support Aghnaanga’s family and cover funeral expenses has already almost reached its $45,000 target.
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