Houston: An Indian couple was killed when their sports utility vehicle apparently plunged into a lake near their home in Missouri city, a media report said today. Joseph Mathai (61) and his wife Leelamma Mathai (55) were planning to return to Kerala next week for a family wedding. Instead, their bodies will be returned there for burial, Houston Chronicle quoted a relative of the Mathais as saying. Divers recovered the bodies of the couple who made a frantic call to 911 after their vehicle plunged into the lake, the report said.
According to the police, the vehicle accidentally landed into a retention lake in the Lake Shore Harbour neighbourhood early Wednesday as the couple returned home from work. The silver Toyota Highlander was found upright in about 20 feet of water, about 40 feet from the shore near a curve in Palm Harbour near their home. The grim discovery came after a long search that was started with a desperate 911 cell phone call at 3:30 a.m. Wednesday from a woman who screamed and repeatedly said: "Lake Shore Harbour!" During the call, the woman repeated "the lake!," as a 911 operator asked again and again for an address and why help was needed. Between the woman's screams for help, she appeared to be shouting in a foreign language.
A man's voice could also be heard. At the end of the 3-minute call, the sound of rushing water could be heard and then the phone went dead. Missouri City Police Capt John Bailey said investigators used triangulation to determine that the call probably came from a vehicle in the water in one of the five lakes in the subdivision.
