Angelina Khalimendik, 31, gave her life Sunday evening after jumping into the flooded Des Plaines River to rescue her seven-year-old son, leaving behind three children and a husband who was out of town when the current pulled her under.

The family had gone fishing at Independence Grove Forest Preserve in Lake County, Illinois, when the boy was swept into the water just after 7 p.m. local time. Khalimendik, a Hinsdale resident, went in after him. She managed to push her son toward another family member before she slipped beneath the surface, the New York Post reported.

A relative and nearby bystanders pulled Khalimendik from the river and began CPR before first responders arrived. She was rushed to Advocate Condell Medical Center, where doctors pronounced her dead. The Lake County Coroner's Office later examined her and found the cause of death "consistent with drowning."

Her seven-year-old survived. Her 11-year-old daughter and 9-year-old son were also present. Her husband was out of town at the time.

Torrential rains turned a familiar river into a hidden hazard

Lake County Forest Preserves Police Chief Ron Davis told CBS Chicago that the area had been hit by "torrential rains" in the days before the drowning. Those rains transformed the Des Plaines River from a place families visit on summer evenings into something far more dangerous, swollen, fast-moving, and full of debris invisible from the bank.

Davis spelled out the problem in blunt terms:

"These bodies of water are flooded with not only extra water, but debris, fallen trees, branches, rocks, other things that are under the surface."

That description matters. A river that looks manageable from shore can conceal submerged branches and rocks that trap a swimmer or knock her off balance. After heavy rain, the current runs faster and the water is murkier, hiding every obstacle. A parent who sees her child in trouble has seconds to act and no way to assess what lies below.

Water-related tragedies have taken lives across the country this year. In Mississippi, searchers recovered the body of 18-year-old Nolan Xavier Wells off a barrier island after he went missing near the coast, another reminder of how quickly open water can turn fatal.

Davis, speaking to ABC 7, offered safety guidance for anyone caught in moving water:

"If you are swept in the water, remain calm. Try to roll over on your back. Use your arms and your feet as bumpers, pushing away at debris and branches and rocks that may be in your way, and try to get yourself in a position where you look closer to the shoreline, where you're able to get yourself out or have people help you out safely."

That advice is sound, and almost impossible for a mother to follow when her child is the one going under.

More than 4,500 Americans drown every year, and most adults never learned to swim

Khalimendik's death fits a pattern the federal government has documented but done little to change. A CDC study found that more than 4,500 people drowned each year in the United States from 2020 to 2022. Drowning is the leading cause of death for children between the ages of one and four.

The numbers behind those deaths are striking. Almost 40 million American adults do not know how to swim. More than half of all American adults have never taken a single swimming lesson. Those figures help explain why so many drownings involve would-be rescuers, people who enter the water on instinct, driven by love or duty, without the skills to survive the current themselves.

Families like the Khalimendiks do ordinary things, a fishing trip on a summer Sunday, and encounter risks that no warning sign fully conveys. A flooded river after a week of rain is not the same body of water it was a month earlier. And a parent's reflex to save a child does not pause for a risk calculation.

In New York City, an unidentified man's body was recently pulled from the East River near a busy ferry landing, one more entry in a grim national toll that rarely commands sustained public attention.

Three children now face a life without their mother

Khalimendik saved her son. She got him to a family member before the river took her. That sequence, child rescued, mother lost, is the core fact of this story, and it should not be softened or complicated by abstraction.

She was 31 years old. She lived in Hinsdale, a suburb west of Chicago. She had three kids: a daughter, 11; a son, 9; and the seven-year-old boy she pulled from the current. Her husband was not there when it happened.

Tragedies involving young people and water have become a recurring feature of American summers. The family of Nolan Wells recently laid him to rest after his body was recovered from coastal waters, his mother vowing to keep pressing for answers about how he died.

No public statement from Khalimendik's husband has been reported. No citations or closures at Independence Grove Forest Preserve have been announced. The coroner's finding, death consistent with drowning, appears to close the medical question, but it says nothing about whether the preserve's conditions warranted any warning to visitors that evening.

Those are questions worth asking. A week of heavy rain swelled the river. Families were still fishing along its banks at 7 p.m. on a Sunday. Whether any advisory was posted, whether the access points should have been restricted, whether Lake County has a protocol for closing riverbank areas after sustained flooding, none of that is answered in the available reporting.

What is answered is simpler and harder. A mother saw her child in danger and did what mothers do. She went in. She got him out. And then the river did not let her go.

In a country where 40 million adults cannot swim and public water-safety infrastructure barely exists outside hotel pools, stories like Angelina Khalimendik's will keep happening, and the people who pay the price will keep being the ones who had the courage to act.