A 12-year-old girl from a top Harlem school tragically drowned during a “chaotic” end-of-year class trip to the beach today as her horrified classmates helplessly watched from shore, witnesses and authorities said.
“We just couldn’t get to her … we could barely hold on,” said distraught parent chaperone Victoria Wong of Nicole Suriel, a beloved sixth grader at Columbia Secondary School for Math, Science & Engineering on West 123rd Street in Manhattan.
Suriel was among 24 excited students who were being rewarded for winning a fund-raising walkathon with the “recreational” trip to Long Beach on Long Island, school officials said.
There were no lifeguards on duty, since the summer season doesn’t officially kick off for the beach until Saturday, when guards will then be posted seven days a week, city officials said. Signs warning about the lack of guards and prohibiting swimming are posted at beach entrances and the backs of lifeguard stands.
The kids — accompanied by their first-year male teacher, another female instructor and Wong — arrived at the beach at Edwards Avenue and “immediately went into the water,” said Brittany Polini, 18, who was sitting with friends nearby.
“One of the detectives told me that the teacher told the kids not to swim. But how do you control 12-year-olds?” said Long Beach City Manager Charles Theofan.
Polini described the scene as “chaotic.
“There was no order to it … They threw their bags down and were screaming and ran in,” she said.
“Some of the kids were in bathing suits, and some were in t-shirts and shorts. They had towels and beach gear.
“I saw them playing on the rocks, and I said, ‘Someone’s going to get hurt.’ … The tide was really low, but the current was very strong,” said Polini, a college student from Forest Hills, Queens.
“They were all swimming out to the sand bar. And then they started playing on the jetty. … Then I saw this girl’s head bobbing, and I said, ‘That girl’s far out there. Who’s watching them?’ Everybody knows you’re not supposed to go in the water [without lifeguards].”
Beach officials said Suriel may have tripped over a ledge in the sea bottom that suddenly plummets down and then gotten caught up in the riptide.
When those on shore realized the girl and two pals were in trouble, three adults — including the female teacher and a nearby man — ran in to help, witnesses said.
They managed to pull out Suriel’s pals but couldn’t get to her in time, they said.
The teacher even got into trouble herself and had to be helped ashore.
“They had an oxygen mask on her … She was hysterically crying,” Polini said.
Theofan said the woman “got pretty banged up on the rocks. It was pretty valiant of her.”
A grief-stricken male classmate of the victim said he even went in to try to help Suriel.
“I was trying to get her, but she kept on being pulled back from the current,” he said, tearing up.
Several lifeguards in the area doing preparation work for the weekend rushed over to help as firefighters arrived.
It took an hour and 20 minutes for rescuers — fanned out in a chain and walking through the surf — to find Suriel’s body on the sea floor.
“Over here! Over here!” shouted the worker who found her.
About six rescuers then carried Suriel’s limp body out of the water.
“Her classmates were sitting in a circle surrounded by [chaperones trying to shield them],” said beachgoer Brad Trettien, 29, of Garden City, LI.
“Everyone was screaming … Everyone was going nuts. They brought her to shore, and it was like dead weight. It was a lifeless body.”
Polini said the victim’s friends “were crying and using her cell phone to call her parents. They were crying hysterically. And they said they were going to look for Nicole’s cell phone.”
The student was rushed to Long Beach Medical Center, where she was pronounced dead.
Family friend Edith Guerrero called Suriel a “sweet, playful kid.
“I don’t know why she was at the beach. Her mother never let her go anywhere, she was always so protective of her,” Guerrero said.
Wong said the tragedy stemmed from “just a harmless day trip” gone horribly awry.
“We just wanted to have fun — they’d been working very hard, and it’s the end of school,” she said sadly.
A bus driver was rushed to the scene to take the upset children back to school.
“I don’t know what happened. I just got called and told it was an emergency and to pick the kids up. Some were crying on the bus back,” he said.
Additional reporting by Yoav Gonen, Joe Mollica, Victor Alcorn and Kate Sheehy