London mother of girl missing in river clings to daughter’s final cry

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“Mom!”

That cry was the last word an anguished London mother said she heard from her young daughter before she was swept away by the fast-flowing Thames River, triggering a massive search for the seven-year-old that has now become a recovery mission.

Little Anna Bielli was with her mother Karen Fermill  and two younger siblings on Thursday afternoon when she apparently fell into the storm-swollen Thames in northeast London, east of the Adelaide Street North bridge, and vanished in the swift currents.

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Saturday, as the search for her daughter entered its third day, Fermill waited at home for news, clutching her phone and hanging onto Anna’s final cry before she disappeared in the water, turning her family’s world “into pieces.”

“Her last word meant a lot, even though it’s just three letters,” said Fermill, 39. “Instead of saying help, she called for me.”

Thursday began as just another summer day with her children, Fermill said.

She’d taken the three of them – Anna, her six-year-old sister and three-year-old brother – to the North London Athletic Fields, close to their Kipps Lane home, so the girls could bike. Anna, she said, was excited to show off her new cycling skills,

“Every day I try my best to make them happy,” Fermill said.

After playing in the riverside park for a few hours, the kids wanted to dip their feet in the water at a special place where their father used to take them, Fermill said. She took them to the shallow, sandy spot along the river.

“Because I touched the water first before them, and it was calm, I let them play for a little while,” she said.

“When their feet touched the water, they were just happy little kids in front of me playing. Then I said, after a few minutes – I said, ‘It’s time’s up, guys. Let’s go back.’”

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Anna, she said, pleaded for a few more minutes at the riverside. As she gathered up her other two children to go, Fermill said she turned her back and in a split second her eldest daughter was in the river and starting to be carried away.

Unable to swim, Fermill said she went into the water anyway but had to hold the other kids who tried to follow her in. She said she could feel the current pulling at her legs and panic overcame her.

“I don’t know how to swim, I don’t know how to float,” she said.

Fermill said she got the other two kids ashore, with the oldest holding the youngest, and turned back to trying to rescue Anna.

“I couldn’t reach her anymore, it was so fast,” she said of the current. “She said, ‘Mom!’, and then raised her hand and she went down.”

Fermill said she screamed for help and tried calling 911, but her phone was wet and she couldn’t be heard on it the first time.

“Then I asked anyone (around) who could hear me for help. It was like my world had turned into pieces, and nobody could help me or Anna at that moment,” she said.

The first night of the search, Fermill said she couldn’t sleep or stop crying, waiting for any sign that her daughter was still alive.

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Anna, a Northbrae public school pupil who turned seven last month, had been taking swimming lessons this summer, her mother said. “Her teachers and classmates love her so much. She’s a very bubbly and active girl. Whatever talent she has, she will share with everybody.”

An immigrant from the Philippines, Fermill arrived in Canada in 2013 to work as a nanny and moved to London when her second daughter, Antonia, was a year old.

She said the six-year-old understands her sister has disappeared and is heartbroken without her best friend and playmate.

London police and firefighters, along with other emergency services, have been searching the Thames since Thursday. An OPP helicopter and aerial drones are also being used in the search. Authorities have asked Londoners to avoid the river, swollen and fast-flowing from recent heavy rainstorms, and leave the search efforts to emergency crews equipped with the right gear.

Tortured by what happened at the river, Fermill said she clings to Anna crying out to her at the end.

“I’m punishing myself because losing her is going to be forever a nightmare in my life.

“Every night, the flashback memories of that moment when she said, ‘Mom!’, it’s going to be important to my heart. I wish I could have saved her,” she said.

bbaleeiro@postmedia.com

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