Tragic Drowning Incident Claims Mother’s Life in Tennessee Lake

Tragedy in Nashville Lake

A moth­er of three drowned while try­ing to save her 12-year-old daugh­ter in a Ten­nessee lake, a tragedy that has left her fam­i­ly heart­bro­ken and high­light­ed the impor­tance of mul­ti­lin­gual safe­ty measures.

Amar­il­ia “Lileana” Vamaca, 38, died after jump­ing into Per­cy Priest Lake in Nashville on August 4th to assist her strug­gling daughter.

Her hus­band, Mar­tin Ambro­sio, was swim­ming in a dif­fer­ent part of the lake and rushed to help, but by the time he reached his wife, she had already entered the water.

Language Barrier Prevents Heeding of Warning Signs

The fam­i­ly, who only speaks Span­ish, was unable to read the warn­ing signs post­ed around the lake about the dan­ger­ous waters. 

Ambro­sio expressed his regret, say­ing, “We don’t know how to read Eng­lish [and] we did­n’t see any signs.” He believes that hav­ing clear sig­nage in both Eng­lish and Span­ish could have made a difference.

Heartbreak and Advocacy for Change

Vamaca’s sud­den death has been incred­i­bly dif­fi­cult for her fam­i­ly, with Ambro­sio describ­ing her as “an open per­son, smil­ing, hap­py, a jok­er” who loved mak­ing friends. The fam­i­ly has turned to their faith to find com­fort in the wake of this tragedy.

Ambro­sio has used this dev­as­tat­ing inci­dent as an oppor­tu­ni­ty to advo­cate for improved safe­ty mea­sures to pro­tect the Span­ish-speak­ing com­mu­ni­ty. He hopes that by shar­ing his sto­ry, he can pre­vent sim­i­lar tragedies from occur­ring in the future.

A GoFundMe has been set up to help cov­er the costs of return­ing Vamaca’s body to her native Guatemala, and the com­mu­ni­ty has ral­lied around the fam­i­ly dur­ing this dif­fi­cult time.