8-year-old Mountain Brook girl among the many killed in Texas flooding: ‘She will live on in our hearts’

An eight-year-old girl from Alabama is among the victims of the deadly flood that swept through a summer camp along the Guadalupe River in central Texas early Friday.

Sarah Marsh of Mountain Brook was attending Camp Mystic, a Christian retreat near Hunt in Kerr County.

A relative, Debbie Ford Marsh, confirmed that Sarah was lost in the flood on Facebook around 10 p.m. on Friday night. The news was first reported by the Kerrville Daily Times, which noted that Marsh is her grandmother.

“We will always feel blessed to have had this beautiful spunky ray of light in our lives,” Marsh said in a Facebook post on Saturday morning. “She will live on in our hearts forever!”

ABC 33/40 chief meteorologist James Spann confirmed the news in a Facebook post on Saturday, adding that Marsh was a student at Cherokee Bend Elementary School in Mountain Brook.

Torrential rain and storms that started late Thursday provoked the river to swell from seven feet to 29 feet in less than two hours.

As of Saturday morning, the death toll has reached at least 24 people, and as many as 25 girls are still missing from the camp.

Vice President J.D. Vance offered condolences to the victims of the flood and their families in a post on X Saturday morning.

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