A woman was found dead after swimming into an icy Alaskan river to save her dog in December.
The body of Amanda Richmond Rogers, 45, was found Sunday in the Eagle River near Anchorage, her family told television station KTUU this week. Anchorage Police confirmed the discovery to the Anchorage Daily News.
Richmond Rogers, a nurse and mother of four, had been missing since December 23. She was swept under the ice when her dog Groot fell and tried to rescue her.
Her sister, Jennifer Richmond, told KTUU that Rogers was found holding Groot's body in his arms.
Richmond Rogers and her husband, Brian Rogers, were walking their two dogs along the river when the incident occurred, the Anchorage Daily News reported at the time. Groot jumped into the ice trying to drink water, and Brian Rogers went into the river to look for his dog. Not knowing where Groot's girlfriend was, he went outside and saw his wife jumping into the frigid sea.
“I screamed so loud, but she was so completely focused on saving the dog that I doubt she even heard me,” she said in a statement in December, according to the Daily News. said. “Before I went back into her opening to catch her, I saw her swimming downstream under the ice, then out of sight. I waited and waited and am still waiting.”
He said he knew his wife was determined to save Groot when he saw “the look on her face.”
“She wasn't jumping in to save 'just a dog,' she was a member of the family,” he wrote. “She was a hero to me and my four sons.”
